Origin Story
by Qoheleth
Summary: Describing the formation and first adventure of the Justice League of Hogwarts. (Hey, if you're going to do a superpowered-Harry story, do it right, that's what I say.)
1. And So It Begins

**Author's note:** The only excuse for this story is that it's a joke that took on a life of its own. Originally, it was a short one-shot meant solely as a parody of all those stories where Harry develops an array of astonishing magical powers over the summer holidays and then blasts Voldemort out of the water without even breaking a sweat. (Reader check: I'm not the only one who's annoyed by those, right?) However, as it developed that none of my readers cared about my attempt at satire, but a great many liked the idea of a wizard Green Lantern, I decided to repost and go with Plan B: a whimsical look at what the Harry Potter cast would look like as the JLA. This is the result. Enjoy.

**Disclaimer:** If I owned _Harry Potter_, I wouldn't own DC Comics. If I owned DC Comics, I wouldn't own _Harry Potter_. As it is, I own neither.

* * *

_All right, let's see,_ Harry Potter thought to himself as he wandered about the empty Quidditch field. _Katie's looking good, so is Demelza; Ginny's looking…_ He flushed in spite of himself. _…well, yes, all right, Ginny's looking very good; and Peakes and Coote seem to be handling things all right. If it weren't for Ron's nerves, we'd be in great sha…_

But before he could think the final phoneme, something extraordinary happened. A bright green light, which seemed to come out of nowhere, surrounded him and lifted him off the ground; before he knew quite what was happening, it had carried him away from Hogwarts and was sending him soaring across the British countryside.

Instinctively, he reached for his wand. _What's going on?_ he thought. _Is Voldemort up to something? Green's his colour, all right… but, if this is Dark magic, how did it get past the defences at Hogwarts?_

Before he could come to a satisfactory conclusion, the light abruptly vanished, and he dropped out of the air onto a desolate strip of Cornish coastline. He glanced around, and realised to his astonishment that he was standing not five yards from a crashed alien spaceship.

_«Come in, Harry Potter,»_ said a voice in his head.

Bewildered but obedient, he stepped toward the spaceship and clambered awkwardly through a dome-shaped opening. Inside the spaceship, prone on the floor of the control room, lay a magenta-skinned alien in a strange green uniform.

_«I am Abin Sur,»_ said the voice in Harry's head. _«I am not of Earth, but of a far distant world – and I am dying.»_

"Um... I'm sorry, sir," said Harry awkwardly.

Abin Sur shook his head. _«It is unimportant now,»_ he said. _«I have rid the universe of a foul and malevolent entity; if in the process I have sacrificed my life, there are worse ways to die. So long as I have a successor…»_

"A successor, sir?" said Harry.

_«Yes,»_ said Abin Sur. He raised his hand, and Harry saw that his middle finger held a green ring, which seemed to glow with the same sort of light that had surrounded him a few minutes before. _«This is the power that brought you here; it is an energy beam that can assume any shape, or perform any task, that I desire of it. With this power, I and a few thousand others around the universe carry out a perpetual battle against the forces of evil and injustice._

_«When I realised that I was dying, I had the beam search this planet for a mind that was both honest and fearless. That is how you, Harry Potter, come to be here: the ring has chosen you as its next bearer. Take it, please, for time is short – and take also the object like a green lantern on the platform above me, for it is from that that the ring draws its power. Every twenty-four of your Earth hours, you must place the ring against the battery and recite the following oath…»_

Harry coughed. "Er… excuse me, Mr Sur," he said. "I'm sorry to have to disappoint you, but I can't accept this power."

Abin Sur smiled. _«I understand,»_ he said. _«When I was chosen, I too felt unworthy. But be at ease, Harry Potter; the ring does not err in such matters. If it has chosen you…»_

Harry shook his head. "No, that's not what I mean," he said. "You see, about a week ago, I was serving detention with Professor Snape when a lightning bolt hit the Potions classroom. A whole bunch of potion ingredients spilled over me, and, when I regained consciousness, I discovered that I had been put in contact with the Speed Force."

Abin Sur frowned. _«Indeed?»_

"'Fraid so," said Harry. "I've even commissioned a red bodysuit with wings on the feet from Madam Malkin's. So you see, I already have commitments."

_«Ah,»_ said Abin Sur. _«Well, in that case, do you know a person named…» _He paused, and glanced down at the image that was forming inside his ring. _«…"Luna Lovegood"?»_


	2. Hermione of Themyscira

"Hermione?" Mrs Granger called up to her daughter. "Could you come down here, please? Your father and I need to discuss something with you."

Hermione sighed, and pushed her book aside; at this rate, she was never going to finish her Christmas-break reading. She could just imagine what she was going to say to Professor Tollers when she got back to school: "Well, sir, I tried to read the rune-books you assigned, only my mother kept calling me down to discuss where to hang popcorn balls."

Since Anne Granger's passion for Christmas decorating was something of a local legend, it was quite reasonable of Hermione to suppose that this was what she wanted for. It was only when she entered the living room and saw the tense, serious expressions on her parents' faces that she suspected that something more consequential might be afoot.

"Have a seat, darling," said her mother, indicating the sofa cushion next to her. Hermione sat down, looked up at her stone-faced parents, and waited for the bolt to strike.

"Hermione," said her mother after a few moments, "I'm sure you've noticed the – well, the changes that have been taking place in you recently."

That was putting it mildly, Hermione thought. Ever since she had gotten back from school, she had been metamorphosing in hitherto undreamt-of ways. Her legs alone had gained four inches since her birthday on the 20th, and she didn't even want to think about what had happened to her bustline; she could just imagine Ron's vacant stare when she got back to Hogwarts.

"Well," said her mother, "the reason for that – it's difficult, just coming out and saying it, but… well, the fact of the matter, Hermione, is that your father and I aren't your real parents."

Hermione blinked slowly two or three times. "You're not?"

Mrs Granger shook her head. "I'm sorry, dear," she said. "We would have told you earlier, but your mother – your birth mother, I mean – didn't want you to know until you came of age. You see, there are certain things…"

An obscure alarm bell suddenly sounded inside Hermione's head. "Hang on," she said. "You're not going to tell me I'm Blaise Zabini's twin sister, are you?"

Her parents exchanged a puzzled glance. "Blaise who?" said her mother.

Hermione leaned back, irrationally relieved. "Nothing," she said. "Just a boy at school. So I'm not, then?"

"Well," said Mrs Granger slowly, "not unless this Zabini character is the son of Queen Hippolyta by the demigod Theseus."

"No, I don't think so," said Hermione. "His mother's a wealthy sensation-monger – that's why Professor Slughorn likes him – and his father…" She trailed off, as the implication of her mother's words sank in. "Wait… did you say 'Hippolyta'?"

Her mother nodded. "Tell me, Hermione," she said, "what do you know about the Amazons?"

Hermione frowned. "Just what everyone knows, I guess," she said, a little embarrassed at not being able to display unusual erudition on the subject. "During Greece's Golden Age, the goddess Aphrodite created a race of ideal warrior women: preternaturally strong, fast, endurant, all that sort of thing. And immortal, of course." She was doing her best to maintain her usual dismissive attitude to such nonsense, but, looking into her parents' deadly serious faces, she was finding that harder than usual. "They founded their own city on the island of Themyscira, and were later forced to go into hiding there during a war between the gods."

"Exactly," said Mrs Granger. "Well, about seventeen years ago, the Queen of the Amazons decided to send an ambassador to the world of men – one who could live among mortals as one of themselves. Since none of the adult Amazons seemed right for the task, she sent her own infant daughter to be raised by two childless mortals, with a spell on her so that her Amazon blood wouldn't surface until she came of age. You were that child; you are Hermione of Themyscira, princess of the Amazons."

Hermione was silent for a moment, trying to sort through the dozens of conflicting emotions that this revelation had awakened in her. After a few moments' thought, however, one minor but pleasing aspect of the whole situation occurred to her, and she grinned. "Well, well," she said. "Won't this be a kick in the pants for Draco Malfoy?"

Mrs Granger arched an eyebrow. "Another boy at school?" she enquired.

"She's told us about this one, Anne," Mr Granger reminded her. "The blond Slytherin boy, you remember?"

Hermione nodded. "He's been ragging me for years for being a 'Mudblood'," she said. "Just wait until he learns the truth about me."

"Truth," said Mrs Granger suddenly. "That reminds me. Edward, could you go get the chest?"

"Oh, yes, of course," said Hermione's foster father, and rose from the ottoman and headed for the attic. He was back a few minutes later, carrying a small but (to judge by his exertions) quite heavy wooden chest with a mystic Greek symbol on the lid.

Hermione took it from him (she was surprised to find that it didn't seem heavy at all to her; evidently the preternatural-strength bit had been true, anyway) and lifted the lid. Inside were two silver bracelets, resting on a length of yellow rope that seemed to glow of its own accord.

"Gifts from your mother," said Mrs Granger. "The bracelets will deflect any spell, up to and including the Killing Curse, while the lasso will cause anybody you bind with it to speak only the truth. There was also an invisible aeroplane, but it wouldn't fit in the box; she'll have to send that directly."

Hermione nodded, and closed the lid. "Well," she said, taking a deep breath, "thank you for telling me all this. I'm glad to know it, and I will try to do credit to my heritage – but now, if you don't mind, I really do have to finish these rune-books for Professor Tollers."

"Oh, of course, dear," said her mother. "Go ahead."

* * *

The two Doctors Granger's eyes followed their foster daughter up the stairs with a certain wistful, apprehensive air, as Merope's eyes might have followed Œdipus as he left Corinth.

"Well," said Granger _père_ after a moment, "I think she took that rather well, all things considered."

"Yes, I know," said his wife. "We've raised a worthy Amazon princess, though I say it as shouldn't."

Mr Granger nodded. "So," he said, "when are you going to tell her about the Union-Jack leotard?"

Mrs Granger sighed. "Not until she asks."


	3. Ron Weasley, World's Greatest Detective

The front door of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes swung open, and a red-haired, freckle-faced boy bearing a noted resemblance to the store's twin proprietors burst in. "Fred, George, I need a favour," he said.

Fred Weasley glanced up with an air of surprise from the box of Daydream Charms he was wrapping. "Ron!" he said. "What are you doing here? Isn't our jolly old alma mater still in session?"

"Hagrid signed a release form for me to visit Diagon Alley," said Ron impatiently. "He needed some caladrius seed from Carroway's Magical-Creature Feed Store, and I said I'd pick it up for him."

"Indeed?" Fred drawled. "You were willing to dare old man Carroway's evil eye just so you could come beg a boon of us? Must be something important."

The tone of his voice almost persuaded Ron to say "Never mind" and dart back out the door, but he stood his ground. "Pretty important, yeah," he said. "It's about these powers of Harry and Hermione's."

"Ha!" said a voice from the back room, and George appeared with his hand outstretched. "Six days. Pay up, twin of mine."

Ron stared in bewilderment as Fred sighed and tossed a Galleon into George's extended palm. "Hang on, what's this for?" he said.

George grinned. "When Fred and I heard about Harry and Hermione, we made a bet about how long it would take you to develop a massive inferiority complex," he said. "At least a month, Fred said. Less than a week, I said."

Ron sighed, wondering what he had done in a previous life to deserve these two as siblings. "Well, can you blame me?" he said. "I mean, first Hermione goes away for Christmas vacation and comes back as this avenging Amazon, and then Harry gets a few potions spilled on him and suddenly he can move faster than the speed of light. I mean, what's a bloke supposed to do?"

"Try to narrow the gap a bit," George nodded. "Preferably by visiting his well-beloved elder brothers in Diagon Alley and seeing if they can outfit him with a broad array of non-lethal magical weapons, such as will, collectively, give him an insuperable advantage over any conventionally-armed foe. All perfectly natural and foreseeable – which is, perhaps, why we have foreseen it. Fred, show our client the merchandise, will you?"

"Gladly," said Fred.

"Wait," said Ron. "What do you mean, 'broad array of non-lethal…'"

But he never finished the sentence, for at that moment Fred whipped a hatbox off a nearby shelf and presented his younger brother with a jet-black rubber headpiece that had been meticulously designed to resemble the head of a black widow spider, size eight and three-quarters.

When Ron's heart started beating again, his first coherent emotion was astonishment that these brothers of his hadn't long since been lynched by some group of public-spirited citizens. His second was a burst of justifiable outrage. "Blimey, you two," he gasped, "what was that for?"

"For your approval, of course," said Fred, with an affectation of woundedness. "It's an essential part of your ensemble. A Cowled Crusader has to have a cowl, or there's just no point to the thing."

"You expect me to _wear_ that thing?" said Ron, aghast. "Look here, Fred, you of all people ought to know how I feel about spiders…"

"Exactly," said Fred. "And what frightens you will also frighten others."

"Death Eaters are a superstitious and cowardly lot," George chimed in.

"So in order to become a figure of myth…"

"A creature of darkness, mysterious and terrible…"

"All right, all right," said Ron. "Now you've got your hearts set on this mad notion, I suppose there's no point arguing. But I'm warning you, the accessories had better be something special."

"Oh, they are," said Fred with a secret smile. "Now, then, let's see how you look in this regalia, shall we?" And he pulled the cowl over his brother's head, and Ron did his best not to shudder as the rubber mandibles nestled against his cheekbones.

"Lovely," said George, although neither he nor Fred made any move to find Ron a mirror. "Just the thing to make a Death Eater wet his little Dark-Mark-patterned underpants. And it'll be even more impressive when you've put on the cape."

"There's a cape, too?" said Ron wearily.

"Naturally," said George. "A cape, and a suit of body armour, and a utility belt equipped with everything from enchanted boomerangs to Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder. When you order a super-identity from Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, you're not settling for second-best."

The mention of the utility belt had a heartening effect on Ron; for the first time, he began to view the proposed scheme with something other than revulsion. If one got to throw enchanted boomerangs around, maybe dressing up as a giant spider wouldn't be so bad after all.

"Huh," he said. "Is that all?"

"Well, that's all at the moment," said George. "After all, we've only had six days' warning to get this stuff ready. But there are plenty of other projects on the drawing board."

"Sounds good," said Ron with a grin.

"Wait till you see it," said George. "Shall we show the Dark Knight his cave, Fred?"

"Certainly we shall," said his twin, and strode over to the eastern wall and touched a small oval on the wallpaper. The room gave a shudder and a secret panel creaked open, revealing a darkened flight of stairs leading down to the very bowels of London.

"Right this way, Ronaldo," said George, gesturing to his brother to follow him down the stairs. "Detailed blueprints for all the Dark-magic-fighting apparati that the human mind can conceive await you at the end of this corridor. Use them wisely."

He added, with particular relish, "You're going to love the Spidermobile."


	4. Sea Dragon

Draco Malfoy stared moodily into his enormous tropical aquarium. He had never been sure why he was so fond of tropical fish; on the surface, it didn't seem like a particularly Draco-ish sort of passion. He supposed it had something to do with those white peacocks of his father's: Lucius Malfoy kept birds, so his son kept fish. It was a subtle way of declaring his independence.

Draco laughed harshly at the thought. Independence? He had no independence from his father. Even now, when his father was mouldering in a cell in Azkaban and couldn't lift a wand to stop him from kissing every Mudblood at Hogwarts, he was still slavishly following the orders of his toad-faced master – not very effectively, maybe, but he was following them.

The truth was that, much as Draco hated to admit it, the fact that Lucius was his father meant something to him. It was the old Slytherin conviction: blood mattered. If a father had given his life to something, the son was honour-bound to do the same – even if that meant kowtowing like a house-elf before a withered old half-blood with delusions of grandeur.

If only his father had been someone else: an inventor of spells, maybe, or a champion Quidditch player, or even an Auror. Anything but the Dark Lord's sycophant that he was.

_Right, sure,_ Draco thought sardonically. _And as long as I'm dreaming, maybe these fish could do a few cartwheels for me._

A moment later, he nearly fainted with astonishment – for no sooner had he formed the thought than every fish in the aquarium froze in its place, curved its body so that its mouth was almost touching its tail, and began slowly rotating through the water in what was unmistakably an awkward attempt at an underwater somersault.

Draco gripped the sides of the table so hard that his knuckles turned white. _Hang on, _he thought, _what's going on here?_

_You have commanded us, lord,_ said a voice in his head – a cool, unemotional voice, which somehow managed to combine the proud independence of a goblin with the uncomplicated readiness-to-please of a house-elf. _We must obey your commands._

_But I didn't mean it!_ Draco thought. _It was a joke, for Ilmatar's sake!_

_Do you wish us to desist, then?_ said the voice.

_Yes!_ thought Draco frantically. _Yes! Desist!_

Instantly, the fish stopped somersaulting and turned their faces toward Draco. _To hear is to obey,_ said the voice. _Long life to the king's majesty._ And each fish lowered itself simultaneously in what might have been a respectful bow.

Draco really did faint, then.

* * *

When he came to, he was lying on the parlour sofa, and his mother was mopping his forehead with a cool cloth while the new house-elf stood by anxiously. "Oh, here we are, Noddy, here he comes," said Narcissa as she saw his eyelids flutter open. "Draco, darling, what happened?"

"The fish," Draco murmured. "They were turning cartwheels… they said I was their lord… they bowed…"

The cloth stopped moving across his forehead, and he felt his mother's hand stiffen. "Noddy," she said, in an altered tone of voice, "perhaps you would go into the kitchen and fetch me my wand?"

"Mistress's wand is not in the kitchen, Mistress," said the house-elf. "Mistress left it on the bedside table this morning…"

"Yes, I know," said Narcissa. "But I want you to look for it in the kitchen."

Noddy seemed excusably puzzled by this odd caprice, but the house-elf's highest law is his master's bidding, and he obediently scurried out of the room.

"You could have just told him to go away until you sent for him again," Draco murmured.

Narcissa didn't seem to notice the suggestion. "So soon…" she whispered. "Why did it have to be so soon? What have they been doing to the oceans, that you had to find out now?"

"Find out what?" said Draco.

Narcissa sighed. "That your mother is a shameless minx – or was seventeen years ago," she said. "You see, the summer before you were born, Lucius and I took a vacation to Biarritz. It was a difficult time in our marriage, and we rather avoided each other for most of the weekend: Lucius spent most of his time in the baths, and I spent most of mine sunbathing on the beach. Well, on the second day, a young man came up to me – a tall, golden-haired young man with grey eyes as deep as the sea, who had more of the carriage of a true pure-blood than any man I had ever met – a man who…" She swallowed deeply, and brushed a tear from her eye. "Forgive me, Draco," she whispered. "It isn't an easy thing for me to talk about."

Draco's heart was racing in his bosom. "You loved him, didn't you?" he said.

Narcissa nodded. "In every sense of the word," she said. "It was the happiest forty-eight hours of my life – and I was prepared, when I woke up on Monday morning, to leave Lucius and run away with him wherever he wanted to go. Only, when I went out to the beach, I found him sitting on the sand, gazing solemnly into the eyes of an enormous sea turtle. He sat motionless for some minutes, as though the turtle were giving him some important piece of information; then, when the turtle turned and clambered back into the sea, he rose and saw me standing there, and kissed me on the forehead and told me he had to leave. I said that I was prepared to go with him, and he smiled sadly and said that I couldn't do that – not because he didn't want me, but simply because I couldn't breathe underwater.

"It seemed that my weekend paramour had been none other than Prince Atlan, the heir apparent to the throne of Atlantis, and the turtle that I had seen him communing with had been a messenger informing him that his father had died, and that he was now the rightful Lord of the Sea. It was a duty that he could not shirk and could not share with me, and we would likely never see each other again – but he promised me, as he took me into his arms for one last embrace, that he would never forget the love we had shared, and he would never give his favours to any other woman, terrestrial or Atlantean. Then, almost as an afterthought, he added that, should I have a child as a result of our affair, that child would be the rightful heir to the Atlantean throne, and, on his death, would receive all the powers that went with that title: the ability to live underwater indefinitely, and the power to speak to and command the creatures of the deep."

She paused, and then added, "Nine months later, you were born."

For a few moments, Draco was literally incapable of speech; then, after a few deep breaths, he managed to say, "So Lucius Malfoy isn't my father, then?"

"No," said his mother. "You are the lone scion of the House of Poseidopoulos – and now, it would seem, the rightful king of Atlantis. I suppose Atlan died defending the Cornish Mertribes against the Dark Lord's attack in October; that is, I suppose, one of the duties of a Lord of the Sea…"

"Then I've spent the last seventeen years believing that I was the last hope of the Malfoy name," said Draco, "when all the time I was really the bastard son of a fish-man." He laughed aloud. "In Ilmatar's name, Mother, why didn't you tell me sooner?"

He leaped up from the sofa, kissed a bewildered Narcissa on the cheek, and ran to the kitchen. "Noddy!" he called. "Forget Mother's wand, and come find me a map of the Floo network; I need to find the quickest route to the Atlantic coast!"


	5. Rubeus Hagrid, Tiny Titan

"I think that costume really works for you, Harry," Hermione commented as the three of them made their way to Hagrid's hut. "The lightning bolt on the mask was a particularly nice touch."

Harry's hand went to his forehead, where a golden lightning bolt gleamed against the red fabric of his mask in exactly the place where, had his face been bare, his famous scar could have been seen. "Yeah, I noticed that," he said. "It does really work with the whole theme, doesn't it?"

"It certainly does," said Hermione. "The next time you visit Diagon Alley, you ought to bring some sort of gift for Madam Malkin."

"I like your costume, too, Hermione," Ron chimed in.

"I'm sure you do, Ron," said Hermione delicately, scrupulously avoiding looking in his direction.

Harry coughed. "So why did Hagrid want us to meet him tonight, anyway?" he said.

"Dunno," said Ron. "I just met him in the corridor on the way back from Potions, and he said that he'd appreciate it if we could stop down by his hut this evening, 'cause he had a surprise he wanted to show us."

Hermione bit her lip. "I hope it's not one of his usual surprises," she said. "Professor Vector has a major Arithmancy exam scheduled for tomorrow; the last thing I need is to be laid up in the hospital wing by a wild manticore."

"Oh, don't worry, Hermione," said Ron, slapping her on the shoulder with what might have been an attempt at mateyness. "You've got Spiderman and the Flash protecting you; no manticore would dare to lay a hand on you."

Hermione turned to him loftily. "In the first place, Ron," she said, "manticores don't have hands, they have paws. And in the second place, I have more powers than the two of you put together, so there's no need to patronise me."

"If you have so many powers, why are you worried about wild manticores?" said Harry curiously.

"I'm not!" Hermione snapped. "I just said it on a whim! Merciful Minerva, I'm sorry I ever..."

"Look sharp," said Ron abruptly. "Target at mortal peril."

"What?" said Harry, then realised that this was the logical equivalent, for a Weasley, of "twelve o'clock". He raised his head, and, sure enough, there was Hagrid's hut, directly in front of them.

As the three of them hurried toward it (Ron lagging behind the others, since he wasn't quite used to his cape yet), the door opened and Hagrid himself stepped out. "Ah, there yeh three are!" he said. "I was wonderin' where yeh'd got ter!"

Harry and Hermione both froze in their tracks, causing Ron to yelp with outrage as he ran into Harry's back. Over the course of their five and a half years at Hogwarts, they had grown accustomed to the school groundskeeper having certain attributes: _kindly_, _warm-hearted_, _monster-happy – _but, above all, _big_. Therefore, when a five-foot-tall man wearing Hagrid's clothes stepped out of Hagrid's hut and greeted them in Hagrid's voice, it came as a bit of a shock.

Hagrid himself seemed to notice this. "Somethin' wrong?" he enquired with a frown.

"Um..." Harry racked his brain for a discreet way of broaching the subject. "Have you... lost weight recently?"

Hagrid blinked. "Wha'?"

Then he glanced down at the shadow he was casting on the hut's doorstep, and smacked his forehead. "Oh, tha'," he said. "Righ', sorry. Keep forgettin' ter go all the way back up." He reached under his coat, and fiddled with a bright-blue belt that was cinched around his waist – and then three golden, interlocked rings shimmered about him for a fraction of a second, and the next moment he had shot back up to his normal height of eight foot six.

The three Gryffindors felt their jaws drop simultaneously. "Hagrid, what on Earth is going on?" Hermione demanded.

Hagrid scratched his head. "Well, it's kind of a long story, Hermione," he said. "Tell yeh what, you three come in here an' get settled down, an' I'll tell yeh all 'bout it soon as I've fixed up a pot o' tea."

* * *

"Yeh see," said Hagrid, setting the four teacups down on the small table as his guests stole nervous glances at a large crate that was shuddering and growling in the far corner, "about two weeks ago, I was out workin' in the pumpkin patch when this little glowin' ball came blazin' out o' the sky and landed on'y a hundred or so yards away. Sorter like a Bludger, on'y it was white instead o' black. Well, I wen' an picked it up – heavy bugger it was, too – an' took it ter Professor Dumbledore ter see wha' he made of it. He said it was a..." Hagrid seemed to search his memory for the right term. "...a white dwarf star, tha' was it. Not that I saw any white dwarfs anywhere on it, but..."

Hermione put down her teacup with an abrupt _clang!_ "Hagrid!" she exclaimed. "You don't mean to say that you were handling a white dwarf star with your bare hands?"

"No, o' course not," said Hagrid. "I was wearin' gloves. Didn' I say that I was workin' in the pumpkin patch?"

"But, Hagrid," said Hermione, with the air of one trying to be reasonable to a suicidal eight-year-old, "white dwarf stars are... _stars!_ They produce enough radiation in the X and gamma wavelengths to kill a person!"

Hagrid chuckled. "Well, this one didn' kill me," he said. "Prob'ly I've got me mum's blood ter thank fer that. But it did do a number on my insides; made the matter in my body able to compress into a smaller space, or somethin' like that. 'Course, I couldn' really control it at first – spent a few days in the hospital wing, hoping no-one would step on me – but then Professor Dumbledore made me this belt, an taught me how to use it to keep my size the way I wanted it. Great man, Dumbledore..."

"So is that why you invited us down here?" said Harry. "To tell us about this new size-reduction power of yours?"

"Well, not exactly," said Hagrid. "'S related ter that, though. Y'see, I know none o' yeh're takin' Care o' Magical Creatures this year –" (here his face darkened, as though that particular wound was still a bit raw) "– but I thought yeh migh at least like ter see the surprise I'm plannin' ter spring on the Hufflepuff fourth years tomorrow."

"Surprise?" said Ron nervously.

"Tha's righ'," said Hagrid, looking quite pleased with himself. "Jus' go over an' open that crate over there." And he gestured to the shuddering, growling crate in the corner.

There was a moment's awkward silence as each of his guests waited for one of the others to volunteer for the job. Harry felt a twinge of conscience; he knew perfectly well that he was the logical choice, but even the Fastest Wizard Alive doesn't always care to test his dodging abilities against a crateful of unidentified Magical Creatures.

In the end, it was Hermione who solved the problem. Gingerly, she stood up from the table, drew her lasso, and roped the latch on top of the crate; then she threaded the other end over a low-hanging rafter, and used the resulting crude pulley to lift the lid of the crate about four inches.

There was a sudden sound of splashing and slapping of bodies, and then three creatures poked their heads out of the crate: three green, snakelike heads with gleaming yellow eyes, their forked tongues flickering hungrily from their long, narrow mouths. Ron choked on his tea, and Hermione involuntarily released her grip on her lasso – not that it made much difference, as the crate was now being propped open by the creatures' heads.

"Foun' 'em on the subatomic world of Utolia," said Hagrid proudly. "Aren' they _beautiful_?"


	6. Ruby Archer to the Rescue

The bells on the joke shop's door jangled wildly, and a red-haired young woman strode up to the counter and gave the bell a fierce whack. "Fred, George, I know one of you's in there," she shouted at the office door. "Don't try to hide from me, or you are going to regret it."

The door creaked open, and George Weasley stepped out with a look of sublime imperturbability on his face. "Hello to you too, Ginny," he said. "Let me guess: errand for Hagrid?"

"Professor McGonagall," said Ginny. "She wanted some hedgehogs for the seventh years to practice Cross-Phylum Transfiguration on, but don't try to change the subject. What," she demanded, pulling a black, metallic object out from under her robes and slapping it onto the counter, "is _this_?"

George glanced at the object mildly. "That would be a Weasley's Wizard Wheezes Level 3.0 Spiderang," he said. "Guaranteed return, resists most non-Unforgivable curses, and does a fair job of taking out any adversary not wearing body armour. Why?"

"Oh, I was just wondering," said Ginny, her eyes narrowing. "I was also wondering why Ron nearly took my head off with it as I was walking past the lake the other day."

"Probably because hes a klutz," said George. "But it sounds as though he's been practicing, so hopefully he'll be more skilful with his utility belt when it comes time for him to take on You-Know-Who's minions."

"Do you mean to tell me," Ginny demanded, "that you've been arming Ron with these things so he can do battle with Death Eaters?"

"That's about the size of it," agreed George cheerfully.

"Then, for heavens sake," said Ginny, "why haven't you..."

"...gotten a Howler from Mum about it?" George finished. "Well, we probably would have, if we'd told her. Our plan is to wait until he's actually saved Gringotts or something, and then have her read about it in the_ Daily Prophet_. She'll still have a fit, of course, but it should at least soften the blow."

Ginny gave him a look. "That wasn't what I was asking, George," she said. "What I was asking was, if you've made this whole miniature arsenal for Ron to wear around his waist, why haven't you given _me_ anything? I believe I was as much of a D.A. member as he was, the last time I checked."

George arched an eyebrow. "Oh, is _that_ the problem?" he said. "Well, if you must know, Ginny, Fred and I had a lengthy discussion about that very matter. We considered how you were our younger sister, and it was our duty as responsible older brothers to protect you – also how you were the only girl in the family, and how positively frantic Mum would be if anything were to happen to you..."

"If you think you can get out of this with that kind of..."

"...and therefore," George continued, raising his voice slightly, "we agreed that it would be positively criminal to have you waltzing around Hogwarts, in these dangerous times, without the fullest measure of personal protection we could devise. Merry Christmas." And he reached under the counter and pulled out a crimson bow and a matching quiver filled with strangely-shaped arrows.

For a few seconds, Ginny just stood there, blinking dumbly at this unexpected turn of events, and reflecting that the twins always found a way to keep you on your toes. At length, however, she managed to squeeze out a faint, "How... how long have you had this ready?"

"About a week," said George. "If memory serves, Fred was putting the finishing touches on the Shield-Charm Arrow while I was polishing that Spiderang that Ron beaned you with."

"Wait a minute," said Ginny. "You mean... you mean that you knew I was going to ask for this before you'd even given Ron his equipment?"

George smiled broadly. "You are just too predictable, sister dear," he said.

Ginny took a deep breath and ran a hand through her hair. "Okay, then," she said. "Why red arrows?"

"Well, we considered making them green," said George, "but that just seemed too – how shall I say – Slytherin. You can always repaint them if you want, although then your costume won't match..."

"No, no," said Ginny. "I mean, why arrows at all?"

"Oh, that," said George. "That was Fred's idea. He figured that, since you were such a wicked Chaser, you'd probably make a halfways decent archer, too – so we took twenty or thirty arrowheads, cast various spells on them, stuck them onto sticks, and presto, your Death-Eater-fighting arsenal was all set and ready to go. Here, try it out."

He picked up the quiver and draped it over his sister's shoulder; then he put the bow in her hand. It was a simple enough action, but somehow the moment seemed strangely solemn, and a shiver ran unbidden down Ginny's spine.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" George said. "Pick an arrow, pick a target, and see if you can hit the one with the other. If you can, great; if not, well, whatever you break will probably be insured."

Ginny glanced around, and her eyes lighted on a peculiar metal statue standing in front of a mirror at the far end of the store. A large, yellow arrow was painted onto its head, pointing directly at the nape of its neck; what markswoman could resist such a ready-made target?

With cool elegance, as though she had been doing it for years, Ginny removed an arrow from her quiver (a bizarre-looking arrow that rather resembled a duck's leg, with little nozzles where the tips of the feet would have been), drew her bow, took careful aim at the statue's nape, and fired. The arrow sped through the air and hit the statue at precisely the desired spot, releasing a stream of vermilion ropes from its nozzles that wound themselves about the statue with lightning swiftness; in less than a second, the metal effigy was as thoroughly and effectively wrapped up as one of Charlie Weasley's Christmas packages.

But before Ginny could congratulate herself on her marksmanship, something utterly unexpected happened. A sudden blast of gale-force wind appeared out of nowhere, rattling the merchandise on the shelves and nearly knocking the new Ruby Archer off her feet, and the bound-and-gagged statue rose into the air and started tearing at the ropes with breathtaking strength. "Merlin's beard, George," it said in a strangely familiar voice, "what's the idea, letting people shoot trick arrows at your customers like that?"

George grinned. "That's the wages of vanity, Dean," he said. "You shouldn't have spent so much time standing there admiring yourself."

Ginny blinked. "Dean?" she repeated. "That's Dean Thomas?"

"None other," said George. "Apparently there was a bit of an accident in Transfiguration the other day, and he got permanently transformed into a wind elemental – so, naturally, he had us make him an android shell to keep himself contained. Oh, it's been a busy few weeks here at WWW."

"Not to mention profitable," Dean commented, peeling off the last few strands of rope and returning to earth next to Ginny. "I'm probably going to be running errands all summer to pay off the bill Fred charged me for this thing."

This comment drew Ginny up short; she hadn't even considered the question of payment. "Why, how much does a Weasley's Wizards Wheezes super-identity cost?" she said.

"Glad you asked," said George smoothly. "Ordinarily, we charge a flat rate of sixty Galleons per power, but in your case – since it's hard to calculate how many distinct powers you have in that quiver, and since you are family, after all – we've decided to let you have the whole lot for only seventy-five."

"_What?_"

"Or else," said George, "you could send us a special batch of chocolate-chip cookies every month for the next eleven years. We do try to be flexible, after all."

Ginny fumed in silence for a moment or two; then an idea occurred to her, and a wicked smile spread slowly across her face. "I have a better idea," she said. "How about you get ten Sickles for the lot, and I don't go straight to the Burrow after I leave here and say, 'Hey, Mum, look what the twins made for me!'?"

George hesitated, and looked genuinely uncomfortable for the first time in Ginny's memory. "Well," he said slowly, "I suppose that, in a purely personal sense, that would be quite sufficient remuneration for Fred and me, but..."

"Glad to hear it," said Ginny. She pulled a handful of silver out from her robes, dropped it on the counter, and breezed out the door into Diagon Alley proper.

"We'll send you the costume by owl," George called after her.

"Thank you," she responded, her voice already growing distant.

George frowned and shook his head. "She's a real piece of work, isn't she?" he said. "Where do you suppose she got such a devious little mind?"

"I can't imagine," said Dean dryly.


	7. A Visit to Hogwarts-Two

"I've discovered that I can perform wandless magic by saying words backwards!" said Cho Chang excitedly.

"Fill this out, hand it back in, and we'll get back to you," said Hermione, handing her a clerical form printed on lime-green parchment. "Who's next?"

A huge, rock-like creature that might at one time have been Zacharias Smith lumbered forward. "I got too close to a radioactive meteorite during Quidditch practice," he growled. "Now I'm stuck as a metamorphic mutant, and Ernie MacMillan won't stop calling me 'Zachy-boy'."

"Rough luck, mate," said Ron sympathetically. "Take one of the blue forms, and maybe we can fit you into the reserves. Next!"

"Dobby becomes the World's Mightiest Magical Being when he says 'Shazam!'"

"Really?" said Harry. "Well, good for you, Dobby."

"Thank you, Harry Potter Flash, sir," said the pleased house-elf, who was now a disturbingly imposing six-foot creature in a red-and-yellow bodysuit. "Dobby is happy about it, too. He has always wanted to serve in a League of Justice; he hopes you can use someone with the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power of..."

"I'm sure we can," Harry said. "Just take one of these parchments, and..." A sudden doubt struck him. "Hang on a second... can house-elves write?"

"Well, this one can," said Ron. "He's got the wisdom of Solomon now; weren't you listening?"

"Good point," Harry acknowledged. "Okay, the form's pretty self-explanatory: it just asks for your name – both of them – and a list of your powers, along with a brief account of their origin. There's also a section for contact information during the holidays, but, since you live in the castle, you can probably skip that."

As Dobby headed to the far end of the Great Hall with his form and a quill, Harry leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms with a yawn. "Well, if it's all the same to you two," he said, "I think I'm going to take a little break. Stretch my legs, maybe run around the castle a few thousand times... you mind?"

Ron shrugged. "Not particularly, no," he said. "How about you, Hermione?"

"No, go ahead," said Hermione.

Then she remembered the blueprints she had drawn up for a Legion of First Years, which she had wanted Harry to look over before she sent them to the Heads of House. "Oh," she said. "Harry, before you go, could you..."

But she was too late; all that remained in the chair beside her to indicate that Harry Potter had been sitting there not three seconds before was a slight indentation in the backrest and a small plume of smoke rising from the seat cushion. Hermione rolled her eyes, let out a small sigh at the impetuosity of speedsters, and turned back to the crowd of Hogwarts meta-students. "Next, please?"

* * *

A blaze of red swept through the corridors of Hogwarts, nearly knocking over Professor Flitwick, scaring the wits out of Mrs Norris, and leaving an odd, Scarlet-Speedster-shaped hole in the Fat Friar (whom the blaze hadn't thought worth the trouble of dodging). In a little under a nanosecond, it had traversed the six flights of stairs to the corridor that held the Fat Lady's portrait; there it dodged behind a statue of Athanasio the Abstemious and slowed down enough to let the light catch up with it, revealing the tall, skinny form of Harry James Potter.

The reason that Harry had given for leaving the Great Hall had been true as far as it went. Now that he was a prosopon of the Speed Force, he got restless rather more easily than he had as a mere mortal, and sitting in a chair and handing parchments to people for an hour on end was to him a very oppressive experience indeed. However, he had had another motive as well – a motive that he had kept secret from everyone at Hogwarts, even from his closest friends.

He had discovered it quite by accident, one afternoon a few weeks before, as he had been testing the limits of his new power. Apparently, the Force that enabled him to move with the speed of Speed itself also gave him the power to change the vibrational frequency of the particles that made up his body, and thereby to travel into any of the numerous universes that occupied the same space as the one he knew.

In the wake of this discovery, he had experimented with numerous vibrational patterns, and had explored several different universes. There was one universe in particular, however, that had held a particular attraction for him – a universe where things were largely, but not quite, as they were in his own – and to this universe he had been returning, on the sly, whenever an opportunity presented itself. It was for this purpose that he had excused himself from the Great Hall, though he hadn't said so to Ron and Hermione; he would no sooner have discussed this other universe with them than engage in friendly banter with Dumbledore about the Mirror of Erised – and for much the same reason.

He took a deep breath, and sent a series of commands to his body that he would have found mind-numbingly complicated if they hadn't been all but instinctive to him. The world around him flickered for the briefest of instants; this was the only visible indication that he had crossed over into an alien cosmos.

He emerged from behind the statue and went over to the portrait on the far wall (no longer a Fat Lady, but a bald and irritable elderly man), who opened one eye and glanced at him sourly. "Oh, it's you again," he said. "Password?"

"The last time I was here, it was 'Terræ Infinitæ'," said Harry.

"Good enough," said the Elderly Man, closing his eye again. The portrait swung forward, and Harry stepped into the Gryffindor common room, which was all but deserted; the only person who was there was a thin young man in a red shirt and winged helmet, who glanced up at Harry as he stepped through the portrait hole. "Well, look who's here!" he exclaimed, in a voice identical to Harry's – as, indeed, was everything about him, except for his clothes and his strikingly clear forehead.

"Hello, Hal," said Harry with a grin. "Emerald about?"

"She's up in the girl's dorm," said Hal Potter. "Just a second, I'll go get her."

With a lightning movement paralleling Harry's own capacities, he leaped up from his chair and whisked himself up the spiral staircase. Of course, as soon as the staircase realised that a boy was attempting to climb it, it automatically converted itself into its slide form – but it took 1.5 seconds for it to realise this, which was 1.499999 seconds longer than it took Hal to arrive at the top.

This aspect of super-speed had not occurred to Harry before, and provided him with material for several interesting speculations. Fortunately, however, he was not given time to delve very deeply into the possibilities before a black-clad figure slid down the new-formed slide and enfolded him in an enthusiastic hug. "_Harry!_" she exclaimed. "What's kept you? You've never let this much time go between visits before!"

Harry shrugged as well as he could while in the grip of Emerald's judo-trained arms. "I've been busy," he said. "League stuff, you know."

"Well, don't let it happen again, you hear?" said Emerald, her almond-shaped eyes twinkling a roguish violet.

Harry smiled and nodded, gazing affectionately at the beautiful face in front of him. The shape of Emerald's eyes, along with her thick, red hair, recalled his late mother irresistibly to his mind, while the whole tenor of her face suggested a deep kinship with Harry himself – which was scarcely surprising, of course, seeing as how she was his (or, rather, Hal's) twin sister.

For this was the central difference between this universe (which Harry was wont, despite Hal and Emerald's protestations, to refer to as Earth-Two) and the universe of which Harry was a part. In Earth-2, when James and Lily Potter had conceived a son in October of 1979, they had conceived a daughter as well – and this, through a complex cause-and-effect sequence that Harry never fully grasped, had led to the Potters discovering Wormtail's treachery shortly before their Halloween 1981 date with destiny, and consequently to their ultimate survival. This in turn had dramatically altered the history of the First Voldemort War: with no failed attack on Godric's Hollow to render him impotent for fourteen years, Voldemort had continued to run riot in Britain until mid-1984, when a select subgroup of the Order of the Phoenix (including the Potters) had succeeded in permanently neutralising him.

But Harry wasn't particularly interested in that side of it. The important thing, from his perspective, was that he had found a world where his family was alive and whole, and that he could visit this world whenever he felt so inclined. In a few short weeks, Emerald had become a sister to him in fact as well as in name, and Hal – well, he wasn't quite sure what Hal was to him, but, whatever it was, he liked it.

"So, I guess they haven't managed to get you into school robes yet?" he said to Emerald as the three of them wandered over towards the fireplace.

Emerald glanced down at her leather-jacket-and-fishnet-stockings ensemble and laughed. "Not likely," she said. "Professor McGonagall would like to, of course – she's been complaining about my 'lack of respect for Hogwarts customs' since the day we came here – but, so far, Dumbledore's let me get away with it. I guess Dad's told him about my naturally free spirit, and he realises what a waste of time it would be trying to make me conform to social conventions."

"Could be," said Hal. "Or it could be that he's a dirty old man who just likes looking at your legs."

Emerald's eyes blazed rose with pique, and she was opening her mouth to deliver a stinging retort when the sound of running footsteps was heard in the corridor outside. The portrait hole swung open, and a slender figure in green robes and a blue-and-yellow gas mask burst into the common room.

"Mum?" said three voices at once.

The figure removed its mask, to reveal a cascade of dark-red hair falling about a petite, oval face. "Harry, thank goodness you're here," said Lily Potter. "I was afraid that Emerald would have to make her way out of the castle alone."

"Mum, what's going on?" said Hal.

"Aubrey," said Lily grimly. "He's transferred his brain into the body of the chief dementor of Azkaban, and he's leading his fellow wardens in an attack on Hogwarts."

"Oh, no," Emerald moaned. She hated dementors almost as much as Harry did.

"Your father and Remus are fending them off as well as they can," said Lily, "but they're going to need assistance. That's why you, Hal, need to get down to the grounds and join up with them as soon as you possibly can."

"Right," said Hal, and sped from the room before anyone else could blink.

"What about me?" said Harry.

"You," said Lily, "are going to make sure that Emerald gets safely out of Hogwarts without being attacked, Kissed, or in any way molested by Aubrey or his minions. I know that ordinarily you're always spoiling for a fight, darling," she said to Emerald, "but I think that, under the circumstances..."

Emerald shook her head vigorously. "No, that's fine, Mum," she said.

"Good," said Lily. "Take the secret passageway on the sixth floor; when you get to Hogsmeade, head for Marlene and Sirius's house to await further developments."

The not-quite-twins promised to do so, and mother and children left the common room on their respective errands.

* * *

"Aah!" Emerald yelped, as a spider's web wrapped itself around her forehead. "Bacon's cassock, what's the matter with this stupid passageway?"

"I don't think it gets many visitors," Harry whispered. "I know I've never been in it; it's one of the ones Filch knows about, so it's not much use in my world."

A look of concern passed over Emerald's face. "I've never used it, either," she said. "Do you think..." She paused.

"What?" said Harry.

"Well, it's stupid," said Emerald, "but I've been feeling for a while that we've been going in the wrong direction, and I was wondering if we might have made a wrong turn."

Harry blinked. "How could we make a wrong turn?" he said. "The path hasn't forked anywhere."

"Well, maybe we got the wrong passageway, then," said Emerald. "There's dozens of secret panels on the sixth floor, and we didn't have Dad's map to double-check..."

"Emerald," said Harry gently, "I think you're letting your intuition get the better of you. Take a deep breath, and let's keep moving; we're almost there."

Emerald sighed. "Yeah, you're probably right," she said.

With that, the two of them crawled through the last few yards of the passageway, and Harry eased the open and led his semi-sister back into daylight. Or at least it was supposed to be daylight – but the two of them had no sooner emerged from the passageway than they realised that Emerald's intuition had been right, and that they had indeed selected the wrong sixth-floor panel to slip behind.

For instead of coming out among the clustered pines and brisk January air outside the Three Broomsticks, Harry and Emerald Potter found themselves in the middle of the Great Hall, surrounded by a mob of at least three dozen dementors.

* * *

Emerald, trembling, grabbed hold of Harry's arm as the tallest dementor glided towards them. _"Well, well,"_ said the telepathic voice of Bertram Aubrey. _"If it isn't the Potter bratlings. It was your father's Head-Swelling Jinx that made me into the tortured genius I am, over twenty years ago. Revenge will be quite sweet."_

With that, he threw back his hood, revealing his grey, eyeless head and his shapeless, ever-gaping mouth. At the sight of it, Emerald lost her nerve completely and began shrieking like a soul in torment; even Harry, who had seen a dementor's face before, felt ready to faint, but he forced himself to remain calm.

All right, now, what were his weapons? Well, he could produce a Patronus – except that Emerald was clinging to his wand arm, and he doubted he could shake her off without vibrating so hard as to burn her hands off her arms. Flight was likewise impossible: if he dragged Emerald behind him at the speeds he was accustomed to, who knew how much of her would be left by the time they got to safety?

There was really only one option – an option Harry had never tried before, and didn't even know if it would work. Still, he had to try it: he had promised his mother that he would keep Emerald safe, and this was the only way he could do that.

With the lightning speed that was his prerogative, he whirled his upper body around and wrapped himself around the still-screaming Emerald. He wasn't completely enfolding her, but it was the best he could manage, and hopefully trans-dimensional inertia would take care of the rest.

_Change vibrational pattern,_ he told his body urgently. _Take us home. Now._

The air shimmered slightly about the two almost-siblings; then there was a faint popping sound, and Harry and Emerald Potter vanished from either human or dementor ken.

* * *

"I'm sorry, Lavender," said Hermione, "but I simply don't think we're in the market for a living nuclear reactor just now."

"You know what I think?" Lavender Brown demanded, her hair blazing fiercely. "I think you're jealous, that's what I think. Or else you're afraid I'll distract Won-Won so badly that he won't be able to throw a Spiderang straight if I'm around."

"Nothing of the sort, Lavender," said Hermione coolly. "It's just that we're about due to meet up with a Green Martian, and it could cause a few problems if..."

EEEEE-EEEEEEEEE-EEEEE!

The sudden blast of sound temporarily immobilised everyone in the Great Hall. It was the loudest, most excruciating noise any of them had ever heard; it knocked half the students off their feet, gave at least four of them severe migraines, and shattered every breakable object in the Hall. (Including, regrettably, Zacharias Smith. Filch spent the next week cleaning up the fine marble dust that his body disintegrated into when the sound waves hit it. But at least Ernie MacMillan stopped calling him "Zachy-boy".)

Then, just as the assembled students began to think that they would surely go mad if the noise lasted a moment longer, it stopped – instantly and utterly, as if someone had thrown a radio switch. Groggily, a few of the students (Ron and Hermione among them) looked around to see what might have caused the uproar, and were surprised to find Harry Potter standing in the middle of the Hall, his arms wrapped around a stunningly beautiful young woman that none of them had ever seen before.

A few of them (Ron and Hermione, again, among them) would have liked to ask Harry what was going on, but none of them were up to speaking aloud so soon after that blast, and it was left to the girl to break the silence. "Harry, what's going on?" she said, staring about the Hall with wide, amber-coloured eyes.

"Well," said Harry, uncoiling himself from her nimbly, "it's kind of a long story, Emerald, but a short version would be: Welcome to Earth-One."

The girl blinked. "You mean... you mean we're in your universe?" she said.

Harry nodded. "It was the only way I could think of to get us out of there," he said. "I reckon you'll have to lay low out here for a couple days, and then we'll check back and see if Aubrey's been taken care of. If he has..."

"Harry," interrupted Hermione, who had recovered enough to formulate simple sentences, "who is that?"

Harry glanced up and blinked, as though he was surprised to see her there. "Oh, hi, Hermione," he said. "This is Emerald. She's..." He hesitated, and Hermione got the impression that he was trying to compress a very complex matter into a few words. "She's my twin sister."

"Your _what?_" said several voices at once.

Harry started to run a hand through his hair; then he remembered that his mask was covering his hair, and settled for rubbing his forehead. "It's complicated," he said. "See, there's this other universe that exists in the same space as ours, and the version of me that lives in that universe has a twin sister, and... well, she's it."

"Uh-huh," said Ron. "And can everyone in this other universe scream like that, or is it just her?"

Harry blinked. "Scream?"

"Didn't you hear it?" said Ron. "She was yelling like a banshee when you brought her here. Nearly knocked down the whole castle with the sound waves."

Harry and Emerald glanced at each other. "You know, I did notice some kind of funny vibrations coming from your mouth during the dimensional shift," said Harry. "I was a little too preoccupied to pay much attention to it, but I did wonder about it."

Emerald put a hand to her throat. "You think something happened to me when we switched universes?" she said.

"It's possible," said Harry. "I've never taken someone with me before; for all I know, you're lucky you didn't wind up with three eyes."

"Huh," said Emerald. "So I have a power now, just like you and Dad."

"Looks like it," said Harry.

There was a moment's silence in the Great Hall, broken only when Hermione nudged Ron with her elbow. "Well, Ron, what are you waiting for?" she said. "Give her a form."

* * *

_**Author's note:** What can I say? Mary Sue's practically a Harry Potter character in her own right; she deserves a spot in the League. (Though I had no idea it would take this many words to give her one. The next chapter will be shorter, I promise.)_


	8. This One Is a Real Stretch

George Weasley examined the accipitrine headdress in front of him with the proper pride of a craftsman who knows he has turned out a lulu. "How's that harness coming, Fred?" he called.

His brother groaned. "Slowly," he said. "This N-metal is a real bear to work with."

"Well, better speed it up if you can," George advised him. "Mrs Longbottom's not paying us by the hour, after all."

"All right, now, refresh my memory," said Fred. "Why does Neville need this, again?"

"Because, my dear brother," said George, dropping the headdress into a red-and-blue-striped hatbox with the Weasley's Wizard Wheezes logo on the lid, "he has recently discovered that he is the reincarnation of both the Pharaoh Cheops and an interstellar police officer from the planet Thanagar – and, as everyone knows, reincarnated pharaohs-cum-interstellar-police-officers never go out in public without their bronze hawk's-heads and gravity-warping winged harnesses."

Fred nodded thoughtfully. "There seems to be a lot of that sort of thing going around lately, doesn't there?" he said. "Reincarnation, potions accidents, dying aliens with magic rings: practically everyone we know seems to have had some kind of bizarre life-changing experience during the last month or so."

"Pretty much," George agreed. "Everyone except us, that is."

"Oh, our turn's coming, you wait and see," Fred assured his brother. "Sometime in the next few days, we'll be presented with some phenomenally unlikely opportunity to develop our own set of mind-boggling powers. Whether we'll have the nerve to take it when it comes is another matter, of course, but..."

At this juncture, their conversation was interrupted by a commotion in the street outside. They went over to the window and glanced out, and were mildly surprised to see two workmen dragging a large vat of pink, bubbling liquid along the main thoroughfare of Diagon Alley. They were even more surprised when the workmen put it down directly underneath the window that they were looking out of.

"Tell you what, Bill," said one of the workmen to the other, "what say we pop into Flaggans for a quick one before we cart this thing the rest of the way to the Potion Hut?"'

"Fine by me, Tom," said Bill, and spat on the ground. "Dunno why old man Cole wouldn't let us Levitate the bleedin' thing, anyway."

"Well, you know how hexaplic acid gets when you fool around with loose magic around it," said Tom. "Unpredictable, that's what it is. We're probably being pretty stupid carrying it down Diagon Alley at all."

"Got to get it to him somehow, haven't we?" Bill demanded.

"True," Tom acknowledged. "Anyway, never mind that now. Who's paying for these drinks, or are we going Dutch?"

The two sturdy labourers slipped into Flaggan's Pub, and Fred and George stared at each other with something like awe in their gaze – a gaze that quickly hardened into one of stern resolve. With one accord, they stripped off their robes (revealing identical red long johns with the Gryffindor lion emblazoned across the chest), pulled out their wands and opened the skin of their thumbs just enough to let hexaplic acid into their bloodstreams, threw open the window, clasped each other's hands, and, with a wild goblin battle-yell, leaped out of the window into the bubbling vat below.

* * *

When Fred clambered out onto the rim of the vat some minutes later, the first thing he noticed (apart from the total lack of any commotion caused by his and George's action; it was amazing how quiet Diagon Alley was in early February) was that he didn't seem to have any feeling in his lower body. He could tell that he was moving his limbs, and he supposed that he would know if someone drove a nail into his hand, but he didn't seem to have nerve endings anymore, or even an internal structure in the usual sense. It was, he supposed, rather what a lump of clay would feel like if it decided to get up and move about.

As soon as that thought occurred to him, he wondered whether he could now mold his body the way a sculptor molds clay. Experimentally, he willed his nose to become twelve inches long; sure enough, up sprouted a flesh-coloured extrusion just below his line of vision. Encouraged, he reached out with his left hand and drew a rude picture in the frost of Flourish and Blotts's second-story window fifteen yards away.

He laughed aloud. "Hey, George, take a look at this!" he said, glancing over his shoulder to see if his brother had emerged from the acid yet.

And then he whirled his head all the way around and blinked four or five times to make sure he wasn't seeing things – for George, like him, was sitting on the rim of the vat, only the entire left side of his body was the same colour as his long johns, and between the two of them was stretched a long, thick, red-and-gold _something_ that seemed to be connecting them like elasticised Siamese twins.

Fred looked down at his own right hand. Sure enough, instead of the Caucasoid flesh tones that he remembered, it was the golden yellow of the Gryffindor lion, and his right foot was a beautiful cherry-apple red. It seemed that the acid, in addition to making their bodies perfectly malleable, had fused them into a single body on the molecular level, giving each twin control over one arm and one leg – and when, naturally enough, each twin had tried to use two arms and two legs to climb out of the acid, their perfectly malleable body had obligingly sprouted four new limbs from its torso region.

For a few moments, neither twin spoke.

"Well," said Fred at length, "I think we can safely say that our little experiment has succeeded beyond our wildest dreams."

"Mum's going to have a fit when she finds out about this," George observed.

"Agreed," said Fred. "Not to mention what Cole's going to say when he hears that we took a swim in his hexaplic acid." He sighed. "All things considered, I think Diagon Alley's going to be getting a little too hot for us pretty soon."

George chewed his lip thoughtfully (a wondrous sight, on a face as flexible as his had become). "I wonder whether Dumbledore would mind if we delivered Neville's costume personally and then just stuck around Hogwarts for a while," he said. "Nice place, Hogwarts: remote, Unplottable, shielded against Apparition – and I'm sure Filch would be delighted to see his two favourite students back in action and able to slither under the cracks of locked doors."

Fred looked at his brother admiringly. "George, ___mon frère_," he said, "you are so right sometimes, it's frightening."


	9. Rounding Out the Cast

"You wished to see me, Albus?" said Severus Snape.

Albus Dumbledore glanced up from his astrolabe. "Ah, yes, Severus," he said. "Take a seat." He gestured to the chair in front of his desk, and Snape obligingly eased himself into it, wondering what the "rather momentous matter" might be that the Headmaster had wanted to speak to him about. The only recent event he knew of that might have been classified as momentous (at least, he suspected that the school's board of regents might have considered it so, had they caught wind of the gossip about it in the faculty lounge) was that Dumbledore had canceled his scheduled trip to the Cornish coast and had instead spent the past five days in Bermuda – but what that had to do with him, he hadn't a notion.

"Have a lemon drop," Dumbledore said, pushing a bowl of such sweetmeats towards the Defence against the Dark Arts master.

Snape made a polite gesture of refusal.

"Oh, come now," said Dumbledore. "They're good for you. Make your beard grow. Here, here's a nice one." He plucked a particularly shiny yellow ellipsoid from off the top of the pile and proffered it to Snape with an air of quiet firmness, and Snape, who saw that there was nothing to be gained by resistance, took the lemon drop and popped it into his mouth with a resigned sigh.

He was sucking on it thoughtfully, and reflecting that he had expected something called a "lemon drop" to be a bit sourer than this, when he belatedly realised that Dumbledore had handed him the candy with his right hand – and that that hand hadn't had a spot of black on it.

"Albus," he exclaimed. "Your hand..."

"Ah, you noticed," said Dumbledore, with a broad smile. "Yes, it seems I shall be able to bowl again after all, despite Voldemort's best endeavours. You see, about a week ago, Miss Granger came to ask a favour of me with regard to this League the students are forming; you know about that, I suppose."

"It would be difficult for me not to," said Snape dryly, "since I spent most of last Thursday endeavouring to restore a semblance of order to my classroom after Mr Thomas decided to block his partner's jinx with a Category-One cyclone."

"Did he, now?" said Dumbledore, amused. "I wondered where all the rubies in the Gryffindor hourglass had gone. Well, as I say, Miss Granger came to me on Thursday, having discovered a very definite snag in her and the other members' plans for this League. It seems that, under a very ancient wizarding law, every benevolent organisation of super-powered individuals must include at least one adult Kryptonian, and so..."

"Kryptonian?" Snape repeated.

"A race of man-like beings from a distant planet," said Dumbledore. "Extinct now, poor fellows, but quite an important people in their day – and their range of physical powers was something phenomenal. Enormous strength, tremendously acute senses, invulnerability to nearly everything except the radiation of a certain meteoric mineral – under the proper circumstances, even the power of flight."

"Most impressive," said Snape, looking remarkably unimpressed.

"So I thought," said Dumbledore. "It seemed like just the sort of package that befitted a Headmaster of Hogwarts – and so, being loath to disappoint a charming young lady like Miss Granger, I contacted a gentleman I know in America who I thought might happen to have a fragment of Kryptonian hair or skin lying around his shop and brewed myself a nice, hot flagon of modified Polyjuice Potion."

"_Modified_ Polyjuice Potion?" said Snape.

"Certainly," said Dumbledore. "Ordinary Polyjuice Potion would have been worthless for my purposes: it would only have turned me into a perfect replica of my Kryptonian original for a short period of time – and, since Kryptonians are technically non-human, even that minor task might well have gone awry. What I wanted was a potion that would change my species, permanently, without changing my outward appearance in the least; I wanted to be the Kryptonian that Albus Dumbledore would have been, had he happened to be born on Krypton. It was a difficult thing to arrange, but eventually I found a recipe that worked – and thus I became... well, what you see." He spread his arms wide, as though inviting his DDA master's admiration.

Snape's face darkened, partly out of concern for the Headmaster's sanity and partly out of his native impatience for fantastic tales. "Forgive me, Albus," he said, rising from his chair, "but all I see is an elderly wizard who wishes me to believe that he is a creature from a distant star solely on the basis of an admittedly impressive curse recovery. He will, I trust, pardon me if I decline to join him in his hallucination."

Dumbledore nodded thoughtfully. "I see," he said. "You think that the sudden reversal of Voldemort's curse unhinged my mind, is that it?"

"Something of the sort did cross my mind," said Snape.

"Very well," said Dumbledore, opening his arms even wider. "Then I think it's time for you to kill me."

Snape blinked. "What?"

"To kill me," repeated Dumbledore. "We agreed that you would do so eventually, did we not? And surely such a doddering half-wit as I have evidently become ought not to be allowed to remain in a position of authority. If you play your cards properly, you may not even have to flee the school."

"But, Albus..." Snape began.

"This is not a debate, Severus," said Dumbledore sternly. "As both your academic superior and your commander in the war against Voldemort, I am ordering you to kill me. Now."

There was that in his voice which brooked no argument. Almost without conscious volition, Snape found himself drawing his wand, pointing it at the Headmaster of Hogwarts, and shouting, "_Avada Kedavra!_"

A jet of green light shot from the end of his wand, and struck Dumbledore squarely on the tip of his long, crooked nose; then, to Snape's astonishment, it ricocheted off that nose and crashed into the eastern wall of the office, causing three mediæval headmasters to scurry for cover.

Dumbledore straightened his half-moon spectacles, which had been knocked askew by the force of the impact, and looked mildly up at the awestruck Snape. "Well, Severus," he said, "what say you now?"

Snape regained his composure with practiced ease. "My apologies, Albus," he said, making a graceful bow. "Your mind is every bit as sound as your body – and that, it would seem, is very sound indeed."

Dumbledore smiled. "Yes, a long weekend spent soaking up yellow sun's rays in Bermuda does wonders for the constitution," he said. "Incidentally, have you finished your lemon drop yet?"

Snape blinked, and felt at the tiny sliver of crystallised sugar on his tongue. "Yes, almost," he said. "Why, what..."

But even as he spoke, the last bit of lemon drop dissolved into his saliva, and the next moment his entire body was seized with a violent spasm. The sensation that went through him was almost indescribable: it felt as though he were simultaneously melting like hot candle wax and being buried alive in Antarctic snow. He fell to one knee and remained there for perhaps thirty-five seconds, with his eyes closed in agony and his right hand gripping the Headmaster's desk as though his life depended on it; then, as suddenly as it had started, the spasm subsided, and he returned shakily to his feet.

The first thing he noticed was that the world around him seemed to have gotten much more intricate – or else he was perceiving much more of it than he was used to doing. He counted five different phenomena that he was observing without the aid of eyes, ears, nose, skin, or tongue – though what he _was_ observing them with, he hadn't a notion. He also noticed that he felt much stronger in body than he had ever felt before; it seemed to him that he could have lifted a hippogriff by the tail and blown down the castle with a breath, and he was only mildly surprised, glancing down at Dumbledore's desk, to find that he had left three-inch-deep finger-marks in the wood where he had clung to it. But the most startling discovery of all was when he looked down at his hands, and found that they were covered with smooth, green skin, something like that of a frog, yet seeming somehow more fluid and malleable.

He glanced up sharply at the Headmaster. "Albus, what..." he began.

But he found that he had no need to finish the question. Without Dumbledore saying a word, all his thoughts were clear for his DDA master to perceive; the art of mind reading, which Snape had so often denigrated as a Muggle fantasy, was apparently another of the gifts he now possessed. He saw that the law that Hermione Granger had found in one of Madam Pince's ancient tomes required the Justice League of Hogwarts to have a Green Martian for a member as well as a Kryptonian; he saw that Dumbledore had realised the advantages that would accrue if his spy among the Death Eaters possessed the Martian gift of telepathy; and he saw how Dumbledore had, in consequence, brewed a second batch of modified Polyjuice Potion, coated one of his lemon drops with just enough to cause permanent transformation, and then summoned Snape to his office.

His lip curled. "You might have warned me in advance, Albus," he said.

"I might have," Dumbledore agreed, "but then I wouldn't have gotten to see the look on your face."

Seeing that this motive did not recommend itself to the new Martian, he added, "It's not so bad, you know. As a shapeshifter, you can change back to your old form at any time (should you wish to, that is), so there oughtn't to be any impediment to your living as you always have – except, of course, that you'll have to avoid fire as much as possible."

"Ah," said Snape. "Avoid fire. I see. And may I ask how I am supposed to do that, living as I do in a world where three-fifths of all travel is accomplished through fireplaces?"

"Well, as to that," said Dumbledore thoughtfully, "I doubt a Floo-powdered fire would affect you in the same way as an ordinary fire. But you will certainly have to live rather cautiously and cleverly from now on – which is partially why I chose you for the role, rather than, say, Filius. That famous Slytherin guile of yours may end up being more valuable than any other power."

"You flatter me, Albus," said Snape dryly.

"I do my best," said Dumbledore. "So will you be joining us in the League?"

"It seems that I have little choice," said Snape. "Unless you have a second vial of Polyjuice Potion in reserve that will turn me back into a human if I decline."

Dumbledore cocked his head. "And what makes you think I don't, Severus?" he enquired.

Snape blinked, and scanned Dumbledore's mind again; sure enough, there was the location and chemical formula of the pre-prepared antidote, together with a record of how Dumbledore had gotten the hair off of Snape's head. For the first time since entering the Headmaster's office, the DDA master smiled. "Truly, you think of everything, Albus," he said. "Very well, I will join your League."

"Marvellous," said Dumbledore, and rose and stripped off his robes to reveal a (to Snape's taste) perfectly garish blue costume with a red "S" on the chest. "Then I suggest we start heading down to the Great Hall. The other members should be waiting for us there; I believe that Mr Creevey is just about ready to set up his group photograph of the completed League."

And, in a swish of cape and robes, the world's two most powerful academics exited the office.


	10. Portrait of a League

"There's too much red in this picture, you know that?" said Colin Creevey, squinting through his camera's shutter with a frown.

"Careful, Colin," said Cho with a grin. "You don't want Professor McGonagall drumming you out of Gryffindor for house disloyalty."

"No, I mean, I _like_ red," said Colin, "but there can be too much of a good thing. I mean, look at this: Harry, Ginny, Dobby, Dean, Fred and George..." He paused, and a thoughtful look crossed his face. "Actually, what would be good... Fred, how about if you and George were to stand behind everyone else and just sort of snake your heads out from the ends of the group? You on the left, and George on the right?"

"What do you mean, Fred on the left and me on the right?" said the left-hand head of the Fred/George amalgam. "I'm George. I'm on the left. He's Fred, and he's on the right. Why can't people keep this straight?"

Colin blinked. "Um... I meant the left side of the picture," he said. "Since you're facing me, that would be your right."

"Oh," said the sinister twin. "Well, we couldn't do that either, since I am Fred really... Ouch!" He twisted his head around and glared at Ginny, who had just poked him in the ribs with her bow.

"Right, so that's taken care of," said Colin. "Then, let's see, maybe Dean should be at the top of the picture, flying overhead – or, better, both Dean and Neville. Dean on the right, and Neville on the left. Can you fellows do that?"

Dumbledore frowned. "Are you sure that's wise, Mr Creevey?" he said. "Mr Thomas's powers of flight are tied to his ability to cause miniature windstorms, and, since we are indoors at the moment..."

"Oh, that's all right, Headmaster," said Dean. "I've picked up some finesse over the past few weeks; I'm pretty sure I can get aloft without blowing down the Hall."

Dumbledore still looked dubious, but said nothing. (And, as the two ærial Gryffindors rose into position, Dean did indeed manage to avoid blowing down the Great Hall – although he did upset a number of suits of armour.)

"Brilliant," said Colin, snapping his fingers. (He had taken to snapping his fingers a lot lately whenever he was pleased by something; he wasn't sure why.) "All right, so... how many members does that leave?"

Harry glanced around, and did a quick tally. "Eleven," he said.

"Twelve," Hermione corrected him. "You forgot yourself."

"Oh." Harry blinked. "Yeah, I guess I did. Twelve, Colin."

"Twelve," Colin repeated, pondering. "We'll probably want to divide that into two rows, one standing in the back, one sitting or kneeling in front of them. The taller people should be in the back row: that'd be Professor Dumbledore, Professor Snape, Dobby, Hermione, and..." He frowned, trying to find a fifth person who was roughly as tall as an Amazon or a Hogwarts headmaster.

"Hagrid?" Neville suggested.

Colin shook his head. "No, that's no good," he said. "We want Professor Hagrid in his minaturised state, so he'll be shorter than anyone else in the picture." He hesitated. "In fact, I'm not sure how to get him in the picture at all, unless..."

"Dobby can hold him!" Dobby volunteered eagerly. "Professor Hagrid can stand on Dobby's hand, and Dobby can hold him out so that everyone can see him!"

Colin blinked, processing the suggestion. "Yeah, that'd be good," he said. "Thanks, Dobby. And, Hermione and Professor Snape, you stand on either side of Dobby – and Professor Dumbledore can stand at the far right, on the other side of Professor Snape."

The five Leaguers named arranged themselves in the order that Colin had specified.

"Excellent," said Colin, snapping his fingers again. "Okay, now for the bottom row. Harry should probably be in the middle..."

"Naturally," said Draco dryly. "What sort of school would this be, if Mister Terrific weren't at the centre of everything?"

Emerald stared at him. "Harry isn't Mr Terrific," she said. "Sirius is Mr Terrific."

Draco blinked. "What?"

"And, Draco," said Colin hastily, "if you could just sort of recline regally at the far end of the picture, right under Hermione's legs there... yeah, that's good. Then, let's see, we should probably put the two Ravenclaws next to each other, Cho next to Draco and Luna next to Cho – and, Luna, could we get something actually coming out of the ring?"

"Oh, of course," said Luna. She thought for a moment, then raised her hand and focussed her will (it was an odd experience, to those present who knew Luna, to see those dreamy blue eyes suddenly blaze with the imperiousness of a Green Lantern), and a green, ghostly shape, something like a giant guinea pig but with four spiralling horns, emerged from the bezel of her ring.

"Oh, is that what a Crumple-Horned Snorkack looks like?" said Snape, glancing down at it. "I always wondered."

"Where'd yeh say those things were found, Luna?" said Hagrid, staring with interest at the construct's long, jagged fangs.

"And Harry, you sit next to Luna," said Colin, "and Emerald next to you – maybe you two could squeeze together a little, so we have more space in this row – good – then Ron can go next to you, and Ginny at the..." He paused. "Actually, what would be even better... Ginny, could you stand right next to Professor Dumbledore there, and actually aim your bow at the camera? Not shoot an arrow, but just pose as though you were going to?"

Ginny grinned. "Love to," she said, and hopped to her feet, drew an arrow from her quiver, and cocked it menacingly at Colin, who, had he realised which arrow she had selected, would likely not have given her a thumbs-up and snapped his fingers a third time.

"Colin, could you knock that off?" said George. "It's starting to get annoying."

"Sorry," said Colin, returning his hand to his camera. "Okay, everyone, smile and say gingo juice."

"Say _what_?" said Ron.

_Ffssht!_

The flashbulb popped, fifteen pairs of eyes blinked (not Dean's, because androids don't blink), and Colin lowered his camera with a broad smile. "Wow, that was easy," he said. "Do I really get an honorary membership for this?"

"I see no reason why you shouldn't," said Dumbledore. "Provided, of course, that we get the picture in a timely fashion."

"Oh, that's all right, Professor," said Colin. "I'll send it to Doctor Photo in Diagon Alley; you'll get it in under a week, framed and everything."

"Marvellous," said Dumbledore. "Then, since we have nothing further to do here, I suggest we adjourn to our various common rooms and get some sleep. We have a busy day ahead of us tomorrow: I will see you all in my office at nine o'clock A.M. for our first meeting."

There was a murmur of acquiescence through the Hall, and the sixteen members of the Justice League of Hogwarts rose and headed for their rooms.

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: And so it begins. With the next chapter, our heroes embark upon their great crusade to defeat the legendary arch-villain menacing wizarding Britain. Who will live? Who will die? Who will emigrate permanently to Earth-2? Find out in _Origin Story, Part II: Hunt for the Horcruxes_!** (Wow. I could get used to this Silver-Age-hack-writer business.)


	11. Briefing and Battle Plans

The next morning, after they had eaten breakfast, ten students and two practical-joke merchants, with Harry at their head, made their way to the seventh floor, where the gargoyle guardian of the Headmaster's office awaited them. "Password?" it enquired.

"Watchtower!" said Harry.

"Quite right," said the gargoyle, and leaped aside to reveal the ascending spiral stairway. Each member of the curious procession selected a step (except Neville, who preferred to perch himself on the banister next to Hermione), and the staircase bore them up swiftly and silently to the top of the Headmaster's tower.

* * *

When they arrived, they found that their elders had preceded them: Hagrid was standing on the Headmaster's desk, arranging a number of Pensieves according to Dumbledore's instructions, while Snape stood by in a corner, watching the proceedings with his gleaming-red Martian eyes.

Dumbledore glanced up as the costumed youths filed into the room. "Ah, welcome," he said. "Everyone find a seat; we'll be ready for you shortly."

"What's that?" Ginny whispered to Harry, pointing to the Pensieves, as they and their Leaguemates seated themselves on various chairs, stools, and futons that the Headmaster had thoughtfully strewn about his office that morning.

"It's a kind of liquefied memory," Harry whispered back. "You put your face in it, and you see a scene from the past the way the person you got it from remembers it."

Ginny wrinkled her nose. "And Dumbledore expects each of us to stick our faces in all six of those?" she said.

"No, I think not," said Dumbledore. (Ginny, who had forgotten about the Headmaster's super-hearing, started guiltily.) "Pensieve fluid is a curious substance, as much energic in nature as material; I think it likely that Miss Lovegood will be able to absorb all these memories into that marvellous ring of hers, and thence to project them onto the wall so that all of us can see them at once. If she is willing, of course," he added, with a respectful glance toward the young Ravenclaw.

"I'd be glad to," said Luna amiably.

As she walked over to the first Pensieve and began drawing the substance inside it into the bezel of her ring, George (who, along with his twin, was quite familiar with Pensieves, thanks to a certain escapade in their second year), extended his neck and glanced into each of the stone basins in turn. Most of them contained the same silvery, transparent not-quite-liquid that Pensieves usually contained, but the fourth one from the left was a different story; the material inside that was dull green, and of a consistency that made it look not so much like a magical mist as like an eldritch slime.

"Eurgh, that's a nasty one," said George, screwing up his face in such a way as to make Cho burst into suppressed giggles. "Whose memory is that?"

"Mine," said Snape dryly. (Cho giggled even harder.) "By derivation, at least. It seems that Professor Slughorn was rather reluctant to part with a particular memory, and, as Mr Potter's efforts to induce him seem to have proved unavailing –" (Harry flushed beneath his mask, and Snape's eyes seemed to glow a little brighter in triumph) "– the Headmaster decided that the simplest expedient would be to have me glance into his mind, and to use my memory of reading his memory in place of his memory itself."

As George tried to work that one out in his mind, Luna stuck her ring into the last Pensieve and sucked up the fluid therein. "Ready, Headmaster," she said.

"Excellent," said Dumbledore. "Get settled, everyone. Harry, since you have already seen the first three of these memories, you may, if you wish, find something else to occupy yourself for the next few minutes. I have heard of your recently-acquired antipathy to stillness, so..."

Harry shook his head, and grinned. "No, Professor, that's okay," he said. "I don't mind sitting still for a little while, if it means I get to see you in that suit again."

"What's this?" said Fred, with a look of interest.

"Very well, then," said Dumbledore. "As soon as Dobby arrives, we can..."

He was interrupted by a _pop!_ so loud as to be almost deafening. There was a slight shimmering in the air beneath Phineas Nigellus's portrait, and Dobby appeared in all his six-foot, red-clad glory.

"Ah," said Dumbledore. "Speak of the devil. Very well, then; Miss Lovegood, if you please?"

Luna nodded, and aimed her ring at a space on the wall that had apparently been cleared of portraits for this purpose. A green beam, rather like that of a movie camera, shot out of the ring and projected a picture onto the wall – a picture that Harry recognised as the opening scenes of Bob Ogden's visit to the Gaunt house. The sixteen super-wizards settled themselves in, and watched the story of Voldemort's rise unfold.

* * *

"This is your final word?" said the bright-green Tom Riddle in the picture.

"It is," said the equally verdant Dumbledore.

"Then we have nothing more to say to each other."

"No, nothing. The time is long gone when I could frighten you with a burning wardrobe and force you to make repayment for your crimes. But I wish I could, Tom... I wish I could..."

As Riddle turned and strode from the office, the picture flickered and faded out, and Luna lowered her arm and began massaging it with her left hand. (Nearly an hour spent holding it extended, with only brief breaks between memories for Dumbledore's comments, had naturally left it quite stiff.)

For a few moments, no-one said anything; then, with an awkward cough, Ron observed, "Well, that was interesting."

"So I thought," said Dumbledore dryly.

"So that's what a Horcrux is," Hermione murmured. "A piece of your soul that you've sliced off and hidden in an object somewhere." She paused. "In a diseased way, that's actually rather brilliant."

"Correction, Miss Granger," said Snape. "The Horcrux is the object itself. The fragment of soul has no special name."

"Oh." Hermione flushed; it had been a long time since a teacher had had occasion to correct her understanding of his subject. "Well, all right, then. It's still horribly ingenious."

"And You-Know-Who made _seven_ of these?" said Ginny.

"Six, I make it," said Dean. "If he wants a seven-fold soul, he'd have to keep some of it in himself, wouldn't he?"

Dumbledore nodded approvingly. "Very good, Mr Thomas," he said. "Yes, we are looking for six Horcruxes – or, rather, four, as two of them have already been destroyed. Voldemort's diary, which Harry rendered insolvent four years ago, was certainly one of them, and Marvolo Gaunt's ring –" here he raised his hand to reveal the broken ring glinting on his finger "– was another."

"So what's that leave, then?" said Hagrid. "That cup o' Hufflepuff's an' that locket o' Slytherin's, I s'pose – tha' makes four – but what'd the other two be?"

"Well," said Dumbledore thoughtfully, "following the same pattern, it would be logical for us to look for something once owned by Gryffindor and something once owned by Ravenclaw. However, as the only two known relics of Gryffindor are in this office right now –" he gestured to the sword above his chair, and then to the Sorting Hat on the shelf above Emerald's head "– and as neither of them have ever been in the vicinity during one of Voldemort's murders, that line of inquiry, at its most profitable, would still leave us with one Horcrux to account for." He stroked his beard. "I wonder, now..." He turned and looked at Snape wordlessly; Snape looked thoughtful for a moment or two, then nodded slowly.

"What?" said Draco. "What's going on?"

"Nothing, Mr Malfoy, nothing," said Dumbledore. "Your Head of House and I were merely... ah... sharing a few thoughts.

"You seem distracted, Miss Potter," he added, as Draco turned away with an irritated snort.

"Hmm?" Emerald blinked. "Oh, sorry. I was just thinking how different that whole story was from the story Mum and Dad used to tell Hal and me. I mean, I know I ought to be used to that by now, after all the little surprises your Binns has slipped into his lectures, but..."

Dumbledore frowned. "You mean that Voldemort did not use Horcruxes in your universe?" he said.

Emerald shook her head, causing her blood-red hair to ripple about her shoulders like the Black Lake beneath the setting sun. "Oh, no," she said. "Our Voldemort's scheme was completely different. As near as I could ever make out, he was trying to work out an Arithmantical formula that would give him total mastery over living things everywhere... or something like that."

"Ah," said Dumbledore. "A pity. I had hoped that you might be able to tell us the hiding places of the various Horcruxes. As it is, I suppose we shall have to trust to old-fashioned detective work."

"Suits me," said Neville, tapping his mace against his hand. "So we find out where You-Know-Who put the things, and then we go in and smash them, is that it?"

Snape laughed scornfully. "If only it were that simple, Mr Longbottom," he said. "You don't know, I suppose, that a Horcrux can only be truly destroyed in a handful of ways. Because of the potency of the magic involved in creating it, he who wishes to demolish it must use an equally potent destructive agent."

"Such as?" said Hermione, pulling out a quill and a piece of parchment from a nearby drawer.

"The obvious candidate would be basilisk venom," said Snape. "That is, I understand, what Mr Potter used to dispatch his seventh of the Dark Lord. Then, let me see, the Shamir would likely do the job, if it hadn't been lost for the past three millennia; so would Fiendfyre, or Quandoquidem Lightning; so would..."

"My ring?" Luna suggested.

Snape hesitated, then shook his head. "No, I think not," he said. "An Oan power ring, I understand, derives its power from the wearer's will – and I don't fancy, Miss Lovegood, that your will is destructive enough to unmake a Horcrux."

"Oh," said Luna thoughtfully.

"What about that dead basilisk that Harry left in the Chamber?" said Ron. "Would it still have enough venom in it to take out a Horcrux or two?"

Snape considered. "Possibly," he said. "Under the proper conditions, basilisk venom has been known to take as much as a quarter-century to dry fully."

"So we might have an anti-Horcrux weapon right here in the castle?" said Ginny.

"Oh, no," said Dumbledore. "The news is a bit better than that. We certainly have one anti-Horcrux weapon right here in the castle, and we might have several more. You see, the sword that Harry used to kill Voldemort's basilisk –" here he gestured again to the sword above his head "– was made of goblin-tempered steel, and therefore absorbs the virtues of whatever it comes into contact with – such as, for example, the Horcrux-destroying properties of basilisk venom.

"In fact," he continued, "since we have such an array of anti-Horcrux weapons, I think it might be best if we divided into teams and searched for the Horcruxes individually. Let me see..." He gazed about the room speculatively, his eyes marking each Leaguer in turn. "Yes. Three teams, of three members each. Mr Longbottom, you will lead the search for Slytherin's locket; I would advise Hagrid and Miss Potter as your companions. Mr Weasley, you and your siblings will search for the cup..."

"I thought you said three members to a team," said Fred.

"For the sake of simplicity, I am willing to count you and your brother as a single member," said Dumbledore. "And I myself will search for the mysterious fifth Horcrux, accompanied by... let me see... I think Miss Chang and Mr Malfoy would be the most help to me. And, Severus, you will, of course, see about that other matter."

Snape nodded.

"Excellent," said Dumbledore. "Mr Longbottom, you take the sword – and, Harry, if you will do me the favour of opening the Chamber entrance for me, I will go extract the basilisk's fangs and divide them with Mr Weasley. And then, I suppose, I shall have to see about getting papers drawn up to excuse the six of you from classes for the next few days, and arranging for Professor Grubbly-Plank to... yes, Miss Lovegood?" he added, catching sight of Luna's raised hand.

"I was just wondering what the rest of us were supposed to do," said Luna. "You didn't assign any sort of mission to Harry, Hermione, Dobby, Dean, or me."

"Ah, yes," said Dumbledore. "I am afraid I assumed it was obvious. It will be the task of you five – and of Professor Snape, who, when he is not actively attending to the matter I mentioned, will continue to teach his regular classes – to stand guard over the castle, and to summon the rest of us in the event of an attack. For I think it unlikely," he said, his face darkening, "however discreet we are, that Voldemort will not eventually learn what we are doing – or that, having learned, he will not attempt a counterstrike at Hogwarts itself. In which case, it will be as well that a substantial amount of our power should have remained on the grounds."

Nearly every member of the League shuddered at the Headmaster's ominous implications. Luna, however, merely nodded obediently, as if Dumbledore had simply asked her to sweep his office while he was gone. "All right," she said. "I think we can manage that."

"I am gratified to hear it," said Dumbledore. "Come, Harry; let us to the Chamber."


	12. The Wayne Technique

Gobbo the house-elf staggered through Crimmin Alley with a (relative to him) enormous bag of groceries slung over his back. It was a dismally murky night in Upper Flagley: only a sliver of moon, and a handful of the brightest stars, could be seen through the thick blanket of clouds that had blown up out of the North Sea that afternoon. But Gobbo didn't mind: his mistress had told him to go out and stock up for the ice storm that was coming the next day, and a good house-elf never quarrelled with his mistress. (Besides, Gobbo had marvellous night vision, thanks to his enormous eyes.)

He had made it to the centre of the town square, where the ancient statue of Bellerophon the Bellicose stood in solitary magnificence, when he heard a rustle from one of the nearby bushes; the next moment, a figure in a black, _vesica-piscis_-shaped cape stepped out into the street, blocking his path. "Spare a minute, Gobbo?" he said.

Gobbo frowned. "Who is you?" he said.

"The name's Spiderman," said the figure. "I want to ask you a few questions about your old mistress."

Gobbo's eyes widened: he knew of only one person who would be sending mysterious people in capes to ask him questions about his old mistress. "You is Dumbledore's man!" he hissed. "You is working with Albus Dumbledore to destroy my mistress's master!"

"Well, not just with Dumbledore," said the figure, with the air of one being fair. "I think there's about a dozen and a half of us, all told. But, yeah, that's the basic idea."

"Then you will get no help from Gobbo, sir," said the elf, with as near an approach to an air of heroic defiance as he could manage while carrying a bag of groceries nearly twice his size. "Gobbo is a loyal house-elf; he does not betray those who were once his masters, even if all the professors at Hogwarts asks him to."

"Well, I don't know that I'd exactly call it _asking_, what I'm doing," said Spiderman. "It's more a 'tell me what you know or else' sort of situation."

"You cannot frighten Gobbo, sir," said Gobbo superbly.

"Oh, no?" said the figure.

"No," said Gobbo. "Gobbo's only joy in life is to please those whom he serves. He would rather have his throat cut across, his tongue torn out by the roots, and his body buried in the rough sands of the sea, than reveal the secrets with which they has entrusted him. His life itself is worth nothing to him, if it brings grief to their noble hearts."

Spiderman seemed to stare at him thoughtfully for a moment (though, since his eyes were concealed by a black rubber cowl, Gobbo could not be certain of this); then, with a sudden lightning movement, he lunged at the house-elf and grabbed him by the neck, causing the bag of groceries to fall from his grasp and spill out over the lane. As Gobbo struggled fiercely but uselessly against his grip, he turned toward the statue, removed a spider-shaped object from his belt, and shot a grapple into the air, which hooked itself neatly onto the hilt of Bellerophon's outstretched wand arm.

The next moment, Gobbo's head began to swim as he felt himself ascending into the air with great speed. The sensation only lasted a few seconds, but what replaced it was perhaps worse – for, when his head cleared, he found himself twenty feet above the ground, with nothing but one black-gloved hand preventing his tiny body from being dashed against the cobblestones of Upper Flagley's Main Street.

"Nothing, Gobbo?" said Spiderman. "Are you sure about that?"

Gobbo glanced down and attempted to speak, but all that came out of his mouth were some feeble squealing noises.

"Didn't think so," said Spiderman. "Now, then, let's establish some terms. I won't ask you any questions that your masters – past or present – have ordered you not to answer. I also won't let go of your neck until we get back on the ground. In return, I expect you to give me straightforward, honest answers to all the questions I _do_ ask. Is it a deal?"

Hating himself with a fervour that a human can barely imagine, Gobbo nodded.

"Good," said Spiderman. "So: you're currently working for a pair of rich-and-stinking pureblood types called Eobard, isn't that right?"

"Master and Mistress Eobard is the kind of wizards that has made England great," Gobbo croaked. "They is as wise as Väinämöinen, as powerful as..."

"Right, right," said Spiderman. "But you didn't always work for the Eobards, did you? You were given to them by your old masters in 1982, since Rodolphus and Bellatrix Lestrange didn't figure they would have much use for a house-elf in Azkaban."

Swallowing, Gobbo nodded.

"Okay, now I want you to listen carefully," said Spiderman. "Before the Lestranges got sent to Azkaban, Bellatrix got a present from that master of hers: a little gold cup, about yea wide, with two handles and a picture of a badger on the side. Do you remember it?"

"The Hufflepuff cup," Gobbo whispered. "Mistress was so proud... 'See, Gobbo,' she said, 'the Dark Lord trusts me with his greatest treasures'..."

"Charming," said Spiderman dryly. "So she never ordered you not to talk about it, then?"

Gobbo stared at him, a sudden note of alarm beginning to arise in his golf-ball-sized eyes. "No," he said. "Mistress never ordered Gobbo not to speak of the cup... but, all the same, she would not have wanted..."

"Never mind what she would have wanted," said Spiderman. "You can talk about it without going against her orders?"

Gobbo nodded fearfully.

"Then just tell me one thing," said Spiderman. "Where is that cup now?"

A thin, high-pitched whine emerged from Gobbo's throat. "Please, Mr Spiderman, sir," he whimpered. "Gobbo cannot..."

The grip around his neck loosened a fraction of a joule.

"Gringotts!" Gobbo shrieked. "Mistress Bellatrix's vault at Gringotts! She thought it would be safe there... she thought no-one would find it... she never thought poor, miserable Gobbo would..." He broke down, sobbing.

His captor considered a moment; then, abruptly, he flicked his left wrist, and the grapple began to unspool itself and to lower the two of them back down like a fishing line. When they reached the ground, Spiderman let go of Gobbo, who tumbled limply to the ground as though he were a house-elf-shaped rag doll.

"Well, thank you, Gobbo," he said. "You've been a great help. And now I think you'd better get these vegetables picked up and get back to the Eobard place before your masters start wondering where you've gotten to, don't you?"

Gobbo nodded dumbly, rose to his feet, and began putting the scattered groceries back in the bag. When he was finished, he hoisted the bag back onto his shoulders, cast one last fearful glance at the black-clad figure standing behind him, and scurried toward Eobard Manor as fast as his tiny legs would carry him.

"Bad Gobbo," he whispered miserably. "Bad, bad Gobbo..."

* * *

A long, red shape snaked out from behind the statue and extended itself towards the spider-cowled figure. "Nice work, little bro," said Fred. "I didn't know you had it in you."

Ron nodded judiciously. "Yeah, I could get used to this," he said.

"Shame about that poor house-elf, though," said Ginny, her long skirt (in which the twins, to complete the mediæval feel of her costume, had rather impractically clothed her) billowing about her ankles as she jumped down from her perch in a neighbouring tree. "It's a good thing Hermione wasn't here, or she'd have you in an Amazon death-grip right now."

Ron shrugged. "I won't say I wouldn't have preferred to dangle Bellatrix herself over a street corner," he said. "One with a lot of cars on it, preferably. But you can't have everything."

"What I'm wondering about," said George, his head emerging from behind the statue on the other side, "is what that elf's going to tell the Eobards."

"Everything, probably," said Ron. "But that shouldn't be a problem. It's not as though the Eobards have any love lost for You-Know-Who; after all, the reason they didn't have a house-elf when the Lestranges gave them Gobbo was that their first house had been crushed by You-Know-Who's giants while they were on holiday."

George looked dubious. "Still, if they were close enough to the Lestranges to get gifts from them, they probably know most of the rest of the potential Death Eaters in England, too," he said. "And you know what kind of a gossip network the old pure-blood families have."

"Well, then, we'd better get a move on," said Ginny. "The last thing we need is for You-Know-Who to have already doubled the curses on the Lestrange vault before we even get to London."

"Can't argue with that," Fred commented.

Ron tried and failed to suppress a grin. Five minutes ago he had interrogating a house-elf from twenty feet off the ground; now he and his siblings were getting ready to invade the second most secure building in Britain. This was _living_.

"So," he said. "To Gringotts?"

"To Gringotts!" Ginny and the twins chorused.


	13. Working Out the Angles

A chill February wind blew through Diagon Alley, and Fornax scowled beneath his muffler. Like all goblins, he was a tropical creature at heart, and standing guard outside a wizarding bank in London during the in-like-a-lion phase of the third month was not the life he had dreamed of as a young goblinlet.

"Refresh my memory, Saglut," he said to his companion. "Why do we subject ourselves to such strenuous discomfort, merely so that the wand-carriers may have a safe place to store their treasures?"

Saglut shrugged. "Because it is what we do," he said. "Our fathers did it before us, and we carry on their work."

"That is no answer," said Fornax.

"It is if one accepts that our fathers were neither fools nor human lackeys," said Saglut. "If it was not beneath their dignity to guard the humans' wealth, neither should it be beneath ours."

"That may be," Fornax allowed, "but surely one might be permitted to know our fathers' reasons for..."

Then he broke off, and turned his head sharply toward the east. "Did you hear that?" he said.

Saglut frowned. "A sort of high-pitched whine, you mean?" he said. "Yes. It came, I believe, from over there." He pointed a long, gloved finger toward Weasley's Wizard Wheezes.

Fornax scowled; he had never trusted the proprietors of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. "Ought we to report it?" he said.

Saglut reflected a moment, then shook his head. "No, I think not," he said. "The Messrs Weasley are unquestionably fools and renegades, but they are not, I think, bank robbers. They may be casting a spell to change the sex of anyone who passes under the second archway – in which case the sensible thing is to remain just where we are – but I cannot imagine that they have designs on someone else's gold."

Fornax considered. "You may be right."

"I believe I am," said Saglut. "Now, then, you were saying?"

And the two of them resumed their conversation where they had left off, oblivious to the black, eight-legged metallic spheroid that was even now crawling along the ceiling of the Gringotts antechamber.

* * *

About two blocks away, in the main office of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, Ron was staring at a small plasma screen with the Spider-Logo embossed on the back. "Okay, the Spiderprobe's inside now," he said. "We should be getting sonar images pretty soon... yeah, here we go."

Ginny and the twins gathered round and peered over his shoulders. A series of black-and-white images, surprisingly crisp considering the size of the equipment that was taking them, were appearing one by one on the screen. They were pictures of subterranean Gringotts: its maze of corridors, its guard dragons (which turned out to exist, after all), and its hundreds of ancient vaults stuffed with gold, silver, and valuable objects.

"Can you imaging owning one of those?" said Ginny, a touch of jealousy in her voice. "Just being able to go in and say, 'Hello, Pyglimp, I'd like to take 500 Galleons out of my vault'?"

"Well, yes, actually," said Fred mildly.

Ginny gave him a look. "Yes, we all know _you_ can, Mr Tycoon," she said. "I'm just saying that, for the rest of us..."

"Hang on a second," said George. "Ron, go back to that last one."

Ron pressed a button, and the picture George had requested reappeared on the screen. To the casual eye, it appeared much like the last five pictures of Gringotts vaults that had flashed across the screen, but the other three Weasley siblings, now that they were paying attention, saw at once what had interested George in it. At the top of one of the shelves, proudly displayed like the badge of honour that Bellatrix Lestrange had considered it, was a small golden cup with two finely wrought handles – a cup that each of the Weasleys recognised from the fifth memory that had emerged from Luna's ring.

"Yep, that's our Horcrux, all right," said Fred.

"How far down?" said Ginny, suddenly all business. "And where is it in relation to the other vaults?"

Ron pressed another few buttons, and the image of the vault was replaced by a multi-level map of Gringotts, still in the process of being filled it, with the Lestrange vault marked in red. "Looks to be about half a mile, on the near side of the caverns," he said. "Here, see for yourself."

He handed the screen to Ginny, who frowned at it for a moment or two, then went over to the twins' counter, snatched up a quill and a receipt slip, and scribbled something on it. "You two wouldn't happen to have a table of the trigonometric values lying around here somewhere, would you?" she said, looking up hopefully.

The twins glanced at each other blankly.

"Thought not," said Ginny with a sigh. "All right, never mind. Flourish and Blotts ought to have one. I'll be right back."

She snatched two Sickles out of the twins' cash register (provoking a loud cry of outrage from Fred) and turned and scurried out the door.

* * *

She was back in about three minutes, carrying a small, parchment-bound pamphlet with a crudely drawn triangle on the cover. Returning to the counter, she dropped a handful of Knuts next to the cash register, then picked up the quill again. "All right, let's see," she said. "We have the length of the two legs, so we can work out the tangent… let's see, 2373.90579 over 64.11016…"

"What are you doing?" said George.

"Working out a trajectory," said Ginny, without looking up from the parchment. "You don't expect me to shoot blindly, do you?"

"Since when do you know trigonometry?" said Fred, a trifle censorious at the thought of any of his siblings caring about something so intellectual.

Ginny smiled. "Since Professor Vector cornered me while I was practicing my marksmanship and said, 'Really, dear, there's a more precise way to do that,'" she said.

There wasn't much her brothers could say to that. The shop was silent for a few more minutes while she finished her calculations; then, after frowning at the paper for a moment as though committing the result to memory, she pulled out her wand and a strange-shaped arrow. Placing the latter on the counter, she held her wand against its tip, carefully keeping it precisely perpendicular with the ground, and said, "_Protractus!_"

Instantly, a small set of ghostly pink figures appeared above the arrow's head. Before any of her brothers could make out what they were, Ginny had snatched up the arrow and fitted it to her bow; then she jumped up onto the counter, aimed carefully at a point almost, but not quite, directly downwards, and fired.

Ron had been warned about this particular arrow when he and his siblings had formulated their plan on the way to London, but it still gave him a shock to see it in action. As soon as it left Ginny's bow, the arrowhead split wide open, creating a wide, gaping mouth that opened and closed itself ceaselessly, as though gobbling up the air in front of it. This, of course, was precisely what it _was_ doing – and, when it reached the ground, it began gobbling its way through that as well, forming a perfectly circular little hole exactly the width of the arrow itself. Within five seconds, it was lost to sight (though the unnerving munching sounds beneath the Weasleys' feet remained audible rather longer).

"And you said the Matter-Eater Arrow was a stupid idea," said George to his twin.

"I didn't say that," said Fred. "_You_ said that. I was the one who..."

"Never mind," said Ron quickly. "How long before it reaches the vault?"

George considered. "Well," he said, "about half a mile, going mostly through granite... I'd say about eight hours."

"Perfect," said Ron. "Ginny, print out a copy of those sonar pictures – no, not that button, the purple one on the side. You can help the twins memorise the route they'll have to take back to the surface once they're out of the vault; if that doesn't eat up a few hours, I don't know what will." He stood up, yawned, and stretched. "As for me, I reckon I'll go drop by the Leaky Cauldron for a bit. Got to stimulate the local economy, you know."

And, with a swish of his cape, he strode out of the room, leaving three perturbed siblings behind him. Fred snorted. "Getting a little big for his body armour, isn't he?" he said. "Just let him dangle some poor house-elf over a street corner, and he thinks he's God Almighty."

"Well, he has been waiting to be the hero for a long time," said Ginny. "You can't blame him for letting it go to his head." She sighed. "Maybe once he fails in some critical task and we have to come save his arse, he'll be a little more bearable. We can hope, anyway."

She knelt down on the floor, and began flipping through the sheets of silver foil she had printed off the Spider-Screen. "Now, what order do these go in?"


	14. The Weasleys Go to Gringotts, 1997

By five P.M., the twins were pretty sure they had the Gringotts caverns down cold. Ron and Ginny arranged to meet them behind the bank to destroy the Horcrux, and, after Fred had kissed Ginny farewell "in case we should never meet again" (George had offered to kiss Ron as well, but Ron put a definite kibosh on that plan), they poured themselves into the hole left by the Matter-Eater Arrow and began the long slide to the Lestrange vault.

It was not a particularly enjoyable process (the tunnel was only four inches in diameter, which was a tight squeeze even for the infinitely malleable Fred and George), but neither was it unpleasantly eventful. Indeed, from the moment when Fred first thrust his head into the tunnel to the moment, about fifteen minutes later, when the last bit of George emerged from its other end, nothing of any significance happened except that at one point George felt an earthworm brush up against his buttock. We will therefore proceed directly to the moment when our heroes found themselves inside vault eight hundred and forty-eight, glancing around at the heaped-up wealth of the family Lestrange.

"Wonder how many goblins they had to kill to get all this," Fred muttered, his eye drifting to the top of a nearby shelf. "You think Bellatrix would miss that catoblepas hide? Seems a shame to just leave it rotting in a bank vault, when you consider what you can make out of it."

"_Those who take, but do not earn..._" George reminded him.

"All right, all right. I'm just saying."

With a Percy-esque sigh at his brother's shamefully felonious tendencies, George reached up and plucked the Horcrux off the shelf where it rested in solitary splendour. Fortunately, Gringotts security had not yet realised that there were intruders in the vaults, so he didn't activate any of its battery of jinxes by touching it (not that any of them, save perhaps the Flagrante Curse, would have had much effect on the Weasley twins as they now were). However, the necessity of taking it with them presented a new problem; Fred and George might have been able to slide themselves through the crack under the vault door, but Hufflepuff's cup required a wider opening.

"Well," said Fred with a grin, "now comes the fun part."

"Yes, indeed," said George. "Do you have a preference as to what we use?"

"I rather like that suit of armour by the far wall," said Fred. "Nice and bulky, should do the job effectively – and no pesky plumes on the helmet to cushion the impact."

"I like your thinking."

With the help of three or four extra arms sprouted for the purpose, the twins got the armour lifted and tilted in front of them like a lance – or, more to the point, a battering ram. Then, with a loud cry of "_Für Das Gröβere Wohl!_", they thrust it forward with all their strength at the wooden door.

The door hardly put up a fight. Like many security systems, it was designed principally to keep people from getting in; when someone seriously tried to get out, it had surprisingly little resistance to offer. It splintered violently on impact, creating a hole in the door quite large enough for two elasticised brothers and a four-inch cup to go through – which they did.

"I suppose we'll have to do some volunteer work to pay for this," George commented, inspecting the damage. "Writing up monthly statements, maybe, or feeding the dragons."

"If we wait around here too long, we might end up feeding the dragons without volunteering," said Fred, twisting his half of their body into a replica of the Gringotts carts. "Come on, let's roll."

* * *

For the next five minutes or so, the Gringotts caverns were host to the unusual sight of a bright-red cart with two heads and no rider rolling the wrong way up the tracks at breakneck speed. Fred and George nearly collided at one point with a real cart heading down to vault two hundred and eighty-nine; fortunately, however, they managed to balloon their body upwards and drive around it, so no harm was done except for near heart failure on the part of the goblin driving the cart.

When they reached Gringotts proper, they shifted back into their normal shape (taking care to conceal the cup inside their shared torso) and strode casually out the door, shaking hands as they did so with the surprised Saglut and Fornax. Before the two guards-goblins had time to recover from their bewilderment, they slipped out behind the building into a grove of ornamental bushes, behind which Ron and Ginny were crouched, awaiting them.

"Well, there you are," Ginny commented. "Took you long enough."

"Terribly sorry," said Fred dryly. "We just couldn't resist lingering in a dark, damp, dragon-infested cave system that was liable at any moment to explode with umpteen thousand security curses."

"Whatever," said Ginny. "Where's the cup?"

Fred withdrew it from his and George's chest and handed it to Ron, who stood up, pulled a basilisk fang out of his utility belt, and raised it high in the air. "Ladies and gentlemen," he intoned, as though his three siblings constituted a crowded audience of admiring onlookers, "I am honoured and humbled to be playing this small part in ridding our world of the vilest Dark wizard it has ever known. I only hope that, when the story of You-Know-Who's overthrow is finally told, my contribution will not overshadow the far more significant contributions of my JLH friends and colleagues."

"I think we can arrange that," said a coarse voice from behind the bushes.

Before any of the Weasleys had a chance to turn around, the air was suddenly filled with flashing black shapes like tiny shovels, temporarily blinding all four of them; then, when the air cleared, Ginny and the twins blinked away the dazzling afterimages to see Ron staring down wide-eyed at his hand, from which the basilisk fang had inexplicably vanished into thin air.

The four siblings whirled around. There, standing just outside the entrance to Knockturn Alley, were two familiar figures, each holding about half of a deck of cards and wearing costumes spangled with black trefoils.

"Hello, Weasley," said the figure on the left, with a grin of animal cunning.

Ron blinked. "Crabbe?" he said "Goyle?"


	15. Card Tricks

"That's right," said Crabbe, his grin broadening. "We were coming out of Borgin and Burke's when we heard you making your little speech, and we thought, well, we've got these nifty magic cards we just bought: why don't we go teach the little blood traitors to show the Dark Lord some respect?"

"Magic cards?" said Ron, still more than a little dazed. "What kind of magic cards?"

"And what's with those outfits?" said Ginny, wrinkling her nose. "You two look like snowmen with clubs painted on."

"Watch your mouth, Weaslette," Goyle growled.

Crabbe, however, seemed to see some justice in the description: he glanced at the pavement, and shuffled his feet shamefacedly. "Well, the clothes came with the cards," he said. "It's supposed to be the ten and ace of clubs; means bad luck to our enemies, or something like that."

"Blackjack," George observed.

"Who's he?"

"So what sort of magic cards are these?" Fred interjected. "I've never heard of a card that could make basilisk fangs disappear when you threw it at them. Old Burke must have sold you something pretty special."

Crabbe chuckled. "Pretty special, yeah," he said. "They're stell... stell... what was that word he used, Greg?"

Goyle frowned, and pulled a cardboard playing-card box out from somewhere amid the folds of his costume. "Says here, 'powered by stell-la-ray-shun'," he said, sounding out the last word laboriously. "Dunno what that means, but it works pretty good."

Fred and George exchanged a quick, startled glance. "Stellaration?" said Fred, a new respect creeping into his tone. "They're making stellarated playing cards now?"

"Well, what do you know," said George, sounding equally impressed. "We may have to start taking a few trips down Knockturn Alley, if this is the sort of thing they're coming out with."

"Why, what's stellaration?" said Ginny.

"Some serious magical juju," said George. "It's a process that uses stellar energy to manipulate the forces of chance, and turns things into whatever they traditionally represent. For instance, I'm guessing that each of those cards in our friends' hands causes some kind of freak happening corresponding to its traditional meaning in fortune-telling."

Crabbe nodded. "Yeah, that's right," he said. "That's what Goyle did when he threw that seven of spades at Spider-Boy there. Seven of spades means loss. Made his tooth disappear."

Startled, Ron raised his hand to his mouth; then he realised that Crabbe meant the basilisk fang, and relaxed.

"Well, now, isn't that marvellous," said Fred. "We'll have to get ourselves some of that, the next time we upgrade Ron's utility belt."

"Definitely," said George.

Goyle cackled hoarsely. "Don't you worry about that, Stretchy," he said. "After Vince and I've taken you to the Dark Lord, you'll be too busy squirming in pain to worry about upgrading anything."

"Oh?" said Ginny, her face darkening as she reached for her bow. "I'd like to see you try."

"Don't be an idiot, Gin," said Fred sharply. "They've still got fifty-one different ways that they can warp destiny. You'd never lay an arrow on them."

"And don't _you_ be such a pessimist, Fred," Ginny shot back. "It's still going to take them time to find the eight of diamonds, isn't it?"

Fred blinked. "The eight of diamonds?" he said. "Why the eight of..." He trailed off, and his eyes widened. "Oh. Yes. I see."

"All right, then," said Ginny. She drew her bow, groped in her quiver until she found her Paralysis Arrow, and strung it and aimed at Crabbe and Goyle. But it was too late: as soon as she had said the words, Crabbe and Goyle had started combing their respective packs for the eight of diamonds, and Crabbe had now found it. Before Ginny could release her arrow, he wound back and slung the card straight at her head like a discus.

Or perhaps like a boomerang. For the card never reached Ginny Weasley; instead, it halted perhaps an inch from the tip of her arrow, hovered in midair for a split second, and then began whirling back towards the pavement where Crabbe and Goyle stood.

The two Slytherins exchanged a single, panic-stricken look, then dropped their cards and turned and ran hell-for-leather into Knockturn Alley. The flying eight followed after them, as implacable as the fate it distorted; it spun into the shadows of the Alley, and the Weasleys saw it no more.

* * *

"Well done, Ginny," Fred observed.

Ginny shrugged modestly. "It wasn't that hard, really," she said, lowering her bow and returning the Paralysis Arrow to the quiver. "All I had to do was remember what Professor Trelawney had said about card meanings, and the idea sort of thrust itself out at me. Eight of diamonds: card of reversal."

Fred shook his head. "I just can't believe they fell for it," he said.

"I can," said George. "They are Crabbe and Goyle, after all. Besides, anyone dumb enough to run into Knockturn Alley with an open-ended jinx coming after them would fall for anything."

Fred winced. "Good point."

To get his mind off the unpleasant pictures that thought conjured up, he turned to his younger brother. "So, Ron," he said, "did that seven of spades knock out all your basilisk fangs, or just the one in your hand?"

Ron looked up at him and blinked vaguely. "Huh?" he said. "Oh. Right." He reached down to his utility belt and groped for the spare basilisk fangs that had been there five minutes before, and his crestfallen look told Fred all he needed to know.

"Well, this is just brilliant," he said. "Here we are, stuck in the middle of London with a seventh of You-Know-Who's soul and no basilisk fangs to dispatch it with."

"Well, don't let's panic yet," said George. "There still might be some other way of getting rid of it."

"Like what?" said Fred. "You're not suggesting that we're going to trip across a certified Horcrux liquidator just lying on the sidewalk, are you? What sort of barmy idiot would leave something like..."

Then his voice trailed off, and he slowly turned his head and stared at the fifty stellarated playing cards that lay strewn across the pavement not ten yards from where they stood.

"Ginny!" he barked.

His sister glanced up, startled. "What?"

"If we tossed the Horcrux into the air, and you had one chance to hit it with an arrow, do you think you could pull it off?"

Ginny considered. "Mm... probably. Why?"

"All right," said Fred. "Go over to that pile of cards our friends so thoughtfully left, and find the ace of spades."

Ginny stared for a moment; then her eyes gleamed as she realised what her brother was up to, and she nodded eagerly. As she ran over and knelt on the sidewalk to begin sorting through the cards, Ron came out of his funk long enough to say, "Ace of spades?"

"That's right," said Fred. "If a stellarated death card can't take out a Horcrux, I don't know what will."

"Found it!" Ginny called, holding up the star-witched spadille.

"Okay, good," said Fred. "Now find your Suction-Cup Arrow and attach the ace to it, face outward... good. Ron, the cup, please?"

Ron handed the Horcrux to him wordlessly, and he held it by the handle in a poised-to-throw position. "Ready when you are, Ginny," he said.

Ginny strung the ace-equipped arrow (taking care not to touch the oversized pip) and cocked her bow. "Go," she said.

Fred threw the cup straight upward, and Ginny followed it with her bow as it rose whirling into the air. Up, up it went, until it was fully six metres above even the twins' heads; then, as it reached its zenith and slowed to a brief halt, Ginny released her arrow.

The arrow whizzed through the air, as straight and true as anyone could have wished, and struck the Horcrux squarely in the engraved badger. As it did so, the ace at its tip swelled to an enormous size, as though it were the mouth of an alligator opening wide to devour a hapless muskrat. A faint but piercing scream reached the siblings' ears, and the cup shuddered and broke into a thousand tiny pieces.

As the shards of ancient china fell to the ground, tinkling softly on the pavement, Ron took a deep breath and seemed to come back to life again. "So that's it, then?" he said.

"Yes, that's it," said Fred dryly, as Ginny went to retrieve her arrow and the now-defunct ace. "Old Y.K.W. is down to four-sevenths of a soul, as planned. And don't worry, Ron: your contribution to his downfall won't be overshadowing those of your colleagues anytime soon."

Ron flushed. "Yeah, well," he murmured, staring fixedly at the Madam Malkin's sign in the distance. "I just hope the other teams are having an easier time of it than we did."


	16. Mayhem at the Ministry

"All right, she's just gone into the building," came Neville's voice from out of Emerald's earpiece. "Give her about three minutes, and she should be in her office."

"You _are_ sure about this, Neville, aren't you?" Emerald whispered anxiously. "I still don't see why the Minister's undersecretary should be carrying one of Voldemort's Horcruxes around..."

"I told you," said Neville, sounding annoyed. "Harry's elf Kreacher knows that Regulus Black took the locket from the cave in Suffolk and brought it back to the Black house, and that Mundungus Fletcher stole it, along with a lot of other stuff, last October; and Fletcher knows that Umbridge took it from him when she caught him peddling the stuff in Diagon Alley a month later. Since Umbridge doesn't know that she gave it to anybody, we have to assume it's still in the dear lady's possession."

Emerald shook her head in combined awe and puzzlement. "What I can't understand," she said, "is why, if your absorbacon is this good, it can't just tell us what and where the other Horcrux is. You know, the one that Dumbledore and Malefoy are looking for."

"I tried that," said Neville, "but apparently the only one who knows that is –" (he took a deep breath) "– Voldemort himself, and he's too good an Occlumens for the absorbacon to get information from him. So I guess the Headmaster and his team will just have to trust to old-fashioned detective work.

"She's probably there by now," he added after a few seconds' pause. "You want to get in position?"

"Love to," said Emerald with relish. She straightened herself up, threw back her hair, and strode confidently into the Ministry of Magic.

* * *

She picked up her badge at the front desk ("**Emerald Potter – Conquest of Evil**") and headed down to Level 1, ignoring the catcalls she received from several passing Ministry wizards. Considering what most of the women who worked here look like, she could hardly blame them for noticing – and she _was_ over fifteen.

Of course, if she and Neville had been tracking one of the other Horcruxes, she would have made a little more effort to be inconspicuous. In this case, though, even if the news did get out of what they'd been doing, there was no reason for Voldemort – who, after all, didn't have an absorbacon of his own – to connect a League invasion of the Ministry with the hunt for his Horcruxes. So Emerald just relaxed and enjoyed the attention.

It ended all too soon. Before she knew it, she was outside a mahogany door reading **DOLORES UMBRIDGE, SENIOR UNDERSECRETARY TO THE MINISTER**, with Neville leaning against the neighbouring wall. "Oh, there you are," he said. "We thought maybe you'd gotten lost."

"I easily could have," Emerald returned. "Not all of us have infiltrated the Ministry before, you know. And that map you drew me wasn't the most helpful in the world."

Neville had the grace to blush. "I know," he said. "Sorry. The last time I had real drawing lessons was in ancient Egypt, and the ancient Egyptians weren't great cartographers."

"Well, never mind," said Emerald, and turned to the door. "How do we get in, do you think? Do we just knock?"

"Not if I have anything to say about it," said Neville, and raised his mace. "This is for everyone who took Defence against the Dark Arts last year." He brought the mace down with a loud Thanagarian battle-cry on Umbridge's nameplate, and, the next thing Emerald knew, she was standing in front of a pile of splintered mahogany wood.

The two of them leapt nimbly through the hole in the door, and found themselves in a room that gave new meaning to the word _cloying_. Neville, who had known what to expect, was only mildly repelled, but Emerald just barely prevented herself from retching.

"Well, well," said a syrupy voice from the far end of the room, "what have we here?" The two students turned, and saw Dolores Umbridge gazing at them coolly from bulging eyes. "Destroying Ministry property, are we? Dear me, I suppose I'll have to call security and have them take you into custody."

"I wouldn't advise that, Miss Umbridge," said Neville. "Unless you want us telling them where you got that locket you're wearing. The Ministry doesn't generally like you keeping things you've seized from black marketeers, does it?"

"Why, I know that voice!" said Umbridge with an affectation of surprise. "You must be the little Longbottom boy I had in my class last year! My, how you've grown – and who might your little friend be?"

"I'm not his _little friend_," said Emerald sharply. "I'm his partner. We're with the Justice League of Hogwarts, and we're on an important mission."

"Are you, now?" said Umbridge, her voice so sickly-sweet it could cause diabetes. "And how did this important mission lead you to pay a call on little old me?"

"We already mentioned it," Neville cut in hastily, seeing that Emerald was on the verge of unleashing a Canary Cry out of sheer irritation at his old teacher's mannerisms. "That locket you're wearing. We have reason to believe it's a Horcrux of You-Know-Who's."

Umbridge's eyes narrowed. "Don't be silly, Mr Longbottom," she said. "What would a fragment of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's soul be doing in an unlicenced discount shop in Diagon Alley?"

"It's a long story," said Neville. "We'll tell you all about it later, but we'd like to destroy it first, if you don't mind."

Umbridge's hand closed around the locket. "Oh, no, no, no, no," she said. "I see what you're up to. You're trying to deprive me of a priceless magical object that I came by quite legitimately, despite what you seem to believe. I've never heard of this Fletcher person you mention..."

"We never mentioned a Fletcher person," said Emerald.

Umbridge seemed taken aback for a moment. "Didn't you?"

Emerald and Neville shook their heads.

"Well... perhaps I have heard of him, then," said Umbridge. "In any event, I shan't be giving you the locket."

Emerald sighed. "Oh, dear," she said. "I suppose that means we'll have to take it from you. Now, isn't that just too bad."

Umbridge smiled strangely, and toyed with one of the rings on her stumpy fingers. "Oh-ho," she said. "So it's a question of force now, is it?"

"Seems so," said Neville. (Emerald noted with disgust that he seemed almost apologetic.)

"In that case..." Umbridge began; then, abruptly, she raised her hand and pointed the ring at the two students. A jet of yellow light shot out from its bezel, and Neville and Emerald felt enormous hands grab them and fling them bodily back through the hole in the door.

As they tumbled to the floor of the hallway outside, Neville landed on his left ankle the wrong way, and a spasm of pain informed him that it was sprained. Emerald, however, was unhurt, and immediately leaped up to run back into the office – but she only succeeded in running into the glowing yellow wall that had appeared behind the door. As she staggered backward, clutching at her bleeding nose, she caught sight of Umbridge smirking at her inside the office, and the hatred Harry Potter felt for the Minister's Undersecretary was nothing to the hatred that his semi-sister conceived at that moment. Someday, she vowed, she would wipe that smirk off her bufine face.

She turned to Neville, who was sitting on the floor nursing his ankle. "Where did she get Luna's ring?" she demanded.

Neville looked up at her mildly. "That's not Luna's ring," he said. "Luna's is green."

"You know what I mean," Emerald snapped.

Neville sighed. "Yeah, I do," he said. "I dunno, maybe the Blacks had a Yellow Lantern ring in their family trove, too. Or maybe she took it from some other unlicensed magical-artifacts dealer; you can find just about anything in Diagon Alley if you look hard enough."

Emerald had to agree with that. "Well, what do we do now?" she said.

Neville shrugged. "Wait, I guess."

"Wait?" Emerald repeated. "Wait for what? For Umbridge to fall asleep?"

"For Hagrid to open the locket," said Neville. "Didn't you notice that he's not sitting on my wing anymore?"

Emerald blinked. "I never noticed he was on your wing to start out with," she said.

"Really?" said Neville. "That's odd. I knew my helmet amplified my vision, but I figured he was still big enough for you to... oh, well. Yeah, I brought him along so he could slip inside the locket and spring it from the inside; then, when Umbridge threw us out just now, I saw him jump off me onto the rug."

Emerald processed this information. "So... when Umbridge shut us out, she shut Hagrid in?"

"Right," said Neville. "Which means he can still open the locket. Plus, he might be able to break Umbridge's concentration – which, if her ring really is a yellow version of Luna's, might be our best shot at getting that wall down."

"Oh," said Emerald. "So we wait."

Neville nodded. "We wait."


	17. Atomic Sacrifice

"Wish I'd brought a machete," Hagrid muttered as he made his way laboriously through Umbridge's extra-fluffy shag carpet. "Dunno what sort o' Minister's Undersecretary decorates her office like this, anyway. 'S alright for a Hogwarts teacher, we're supposed ter be a bit eccentric – but yeh hope fer summat different when it's a question o' keepin' the country runnin'.

"Still, no point in complainin', I s'pose," he added. "'S good cover fer me, anyhow."

This was true. Even if Umbridge had happened to be looking at the floor (which she wasn't, being preoccupied with simultaneously keeping the barrier up and looking through a report on Ministry sanitation), she would have had a hard time seeing Hagrid among the shags, despite the contrast of colours between his costume and the pink carpet. As it was, slipping unobserved to the side of her chair was laughably simple (though admittedly time-consuming) for the Tiny Titan.

This accomplished, he withdrew a pair of tacks from the carpet and broke off their tips. Using these as spikes, he began to climb up the leg of Umbridge's chair. It was an arduous process, since the necessity of being small enough for Umbridge not to hear him drive the spikes into the wood made the distance somewhat equivalent to a full-sized climber ascending a giant sequoia, but the JLH trains its members well. Hagrid never thought of the difficulty involved; he only worried that, given the time he would need to take, perhaps Umbridge might decide to get up and move before he had reached the top of the chair. But, fortunately, Umbridge, having turned her office into an impenetrable fortification, seemed to feel no pressing need to leave it; having finished the sanitation report and made the necessary notes, she Summoned a paperback novel from the other side of the room and spent the next hour or so chuckling over it while Hagrid made his ascent.

At last, breathing heavily, Hagrid reached Umbridge's shoulder level. With the surprising grace that comes with extreme smallness, he swung himself around and landed among the loose angora strands of her cardigan; from there, he made his way gently along her upper body (holding his nose so the smell of her perfume didn't overpower him) until he reached her broad, flat bosom, on which the locket rested in an almost perfect parallel with the ground.

The edge of the locket loomed over him, like a golden house nearly twice his height; the crevice between its lid and its base was almost wide enough for him to see through. He measured it with his hand and made a few mental calculations; then, carefully, he climbed up onto the locket itself so that his feet were resting on the edge of the crevice, leaned back just enough so that he could reach his belt, and began to reduce his size yet again.

It was a ticklish business; he had to readjust his footing with every few millimetres that he shrank, lest he slip off and be unable to climb back up the smooth gold. Eventually, though, he reached the point where he could sit on the locket's edge without overmuch teetering; after that, it was a simple matter to reduce himself the rest of the way and crawl into the heart of the Horcrux.

* * *

It was perhaps the eeriest place he had ever been, not excluding the Forbidden Forest and Azkaban. A strange, green luminescence surrounded him, one that didn't so much dispel shadows as give them the outlines of the objects they concealed; the effect was that of a world where nothingness had taken concrete form, and might leap out at any moment and drag one down into its annihilating maw.

Or was the light merely revealing things as they were? Perhaps it was ordinary light that deceived – giving things the appearance of reality, and concealing the ultimate truth that the whole structure of the universe was built on darkness and non-being. Truth, reason, beauty: all were illusions projected by that flatterer called the sun, and it was only here, in the centre of this darkest of magics, that one saw the reality of things. There is no good or evil…

Hagrid blinked, and shook his head. "Steady on, Rubeus," he murmured to himself. "Don' let the atmosphere get ter yeh. Tha's You-Know-Who's business, makin' blacks look white; he'll sell yeh the Dementors' Breedin' Grounds if yeh let him."

As he spoke, the green light wavered ever so slightly, as though processing a new piece of information; a few seconds later, a familiar voice echoed through the interior of the locket. _"Well, well," _it said. _"What brings you here, Hagrid?"_

Hagrid smiled coldly; he had rather been expecting this. "'Lo, Riddle," he said. "Been a long time, hasn' i'?"

_"Well, hardly long for me," _said Riddle smoothly._ "One doesn't much notice time in this state of being. But you… yes, I can see that the time has been long for you. Two parents dead, a brief spell in Azkaban, four years as perhaps the least successful teacher in Hogwarts history…"_

"Oh, chuck it, Riddle," said Hagrid brusquely. "I know what yeh're tryin' ter do. Yeh think that, if yeh play enough games with yer Legilimency, yeh kin make me ferget why I came here."

_"Why _did _you come here?" _Riddle enquired._ "To destroy me, obviously. I've gathered that much. But why? Because, fifty-four years ago, I lied about your pet Acromantula and got you expelled from Hogwarts?"_

Hagrid was an honest man. "Well, that didn' win yeh any points," he admitted. "Told me what kinder feller yeh were, yeh migh' say. Bu' I reckon I woulder figgered tha' out anyway."

_"I see," _said Riddle._ "And, once you knew, you were honour-bound to try to destroy me, regardless of the consequences to yourself? Because there will be consequences, you know. I have this Umbridge woman under my control to a degree you could barely conceive; if you open this locket, you will not leave this room alive."_

Hagrid nodded. "Yeah, I 'spected as much."

_"Then why are you here?"_

"'Cause, Riddle," said Hagrid, with the faintest hint of condescension in his tone, "not all o' us are as terrified by death as you are."

Riddle was silent for a long moment. _"Astonishing," _he said at last, and did sound genuinely astonished. _"'To follow simple good, be it to greatness or the grave.' The Sorting Hat knew what it was about when it made you a Hufflepuff."_

Hagrid smiled. "Now tha's a righ' compliment, Riddle," he said. "I'm almos' sorry ter have ter kill yeh now. Not quite, but almos'."

And he put a hand to his belt and pressed the control to increase his size.

* * *

Within seconds, his body filled the interior of the locket. For a moment or two, he felt an agonising pressure on his upper body as it pressed against the roof; then the latch gave, and the locket snapped open.

Umbridge yelped, and stared down at the tiny man standing on her bosom. "You!" she exclaimed. "You… what…"

Hagrid couldn't blame her for being speechless. He was a bit taken aback himself; besides being a trifle disoriented by the sudden release of pressure, he had never realised just how ugly Dolores Umbridge was until he had seen her Brobdingnagian face looming over him. In fact, the only person whose presence of mind hadn't been disrupted by the situation was Riddle.

_"Grab him!" _his voice hissed from the open locket. Umbridge's eyes went glassy, and she lunged a hand toward Hagrid, grabbing him around the waist so that he couldn't reach his belt.

_"Now kill him!" _said Riddle.

There was a momentary flicker of fear in Umbridge's eyes, and a brief, wild hope sprang up in Hagrid's bosom. The next moment, however, her face had hardened again, and Hagrid saw the light from her ring, which had flickered out when he had emerged, form itself into a featureless shape something like a pickax. It wound itself up over his head, and Hagrid could feel it shining down upon him, poised to strike.

"Caster o' the Great Magic," he whispered, "have mercy on my soul."

Then he felt a sharp, splitting pain in his cranium – then darkness – then a sudden, impossibly bright light…

And Rubeus Hagrid went limp in his enemy's hand, the first member of the Justice League of Hogwarts to perish in the line of duty.


	18. Four Down, Three to Go

"How's your nose, Emerald?" said Neville. The two of them were sitting in a hallway about a minute's walk from Umbridge's office; they each had a magazine, and they looked, apart from their clothes, like ordinary visitors waiting an office door to open and its occupant to say he was ready for them. (Actually, they were waiting for a sound to come out of Neville's earpiece. They had left Emerald's underneath Umbridge's door, right up against the wall of yellow energy; as soon as Neville could hear what was going on inside her office, they theorised, it would mean that the wall was down and they could get in.)

Emerald sniffed experimentally. "Better," she said. "Still a little stuffy, though. How's your ankle?"

Neville winced as he attempted to turn the member named. "Not so good," he said. "I'll probably have to stay off it for a few days." He grinned. "Good thing I won't be needing it to fight. Three cheers for N-metal, that's what I say."

Emerald smiled.

"You children need something?" said a voice. Neville and Emerald looked up, and saw an elderly wizard poking his head out from the office door to their left.

"We're waiting for Mr Bunbury," said Emerald, referring to the wizard whose office was to their immediate right. "My friend here is a world-renowned expert on ancient Egyptian magic, and Mr Bunbury wanted to consult him about some mystic scarab or other." (She had previously told Bunbury the same thing, when he had enquired why they were waiting in front of his neighbour's door.)

"Ah." The elderly wizard adjusted his spectacles, and glanced at Emerald's bosom. "Then why does your badge read 'Conquest of Evil'? Oughtn't it to be 'Research Project'?"

"Under ordinary circumstances, yes," said Emerald, with a cryptic smile. Having been raised by Marauders, she was a girl well versed in the fine art of dissembling, and one of the most valuable things she had learnt from her Uncle Sirius was that a cryptic smile is frequently worth a thousand words.

So it proved in this case. The elderly wizard's eyes widened, and he nodded knowingly. "Ah-ha," he said. "I see. One of those. Yes, quite."

And he disappeared behind his door again, without dropping any more hints as to what, specifically, he had inferred the Bunbury Scarab to be. Neither Neville nor Emerald was sorry to see him go.

"We'll probably have to move again soon," Neville muttered. "I just hope we don't run out of nearby corridors before…"

Then he stiffened, and rose abruptly into the air. "Got it," he said. "Let's go, Emerald; the door's open again."

And he soared toward Umbridge's office, with the Girl Gladiator in hot pursuit.

* * *

Neville smashed his way through what was left of the door just as Umbridge was removing the power beam from Hagrid's skull. At the sight of his Care of Magical Creatures teacher lying crumpled and bloodied in Umbridge's stubby little hand, Neville felt momentarily ill, and any remaining shreds of sympathy he might have felt for the Minister's undersecretary vanished like smoke. But he was still a warrior, with a warrior's code of honour, and so, as he dropped his mace and drew the sword of Gryffindor from its sheath, he didn't think twice before shouting, "_En garde_, Umbridge!"

This probably wasn't necessary; the sound of the mace crashing to the floor would have alerted Umbridge that she wasn't alone, even if Neville had said nothing. Be that as it may, Umbridge looked up sharply, threw Hagrid's body aside, and aimed her ring at the sword that Neville was raising to strike. A new jet of yellow light blazed forth and wrapped itself around the blade, and Neville found himself suddenly unable to lower the sword another inch.

For perhaps half a minute, the two combatants appeared frozen in place; Neville, struggling to pry the sword from the beam's grip, barely moved apart from the quivering of his arm muscles, and Umbridge sat stock-still in her chair, a cat-like grin on her face. Then, suddenly, there was a loud snapping sound, and the hilt of the sword broke loose from the blade – goblin craftsmanship being, apparently, not as sturdy as Oan ring energy or N-metal-enhanced strength.

Neville, caught off guard, was sent careening through the air with all the force that he had just been exerting on the sword. He spiraled backwards, head over heels, and crashed headfirst into the wall behind him; dizzy from the impact, he lost control over his harness's gravity-warping powers, and fell crashing to the ground. A spasm of pain shot through his right foot as he landed; apparently, he had now managed to sprain his other ankle.

_I did my best, Gram, _was his last thought before blacking out. _But these things just seem to happen to me…_

* * *

Umbridge cackled with malicious satisfaction. "Poor Mr Longbottom," she cooed. "Such a beautiful sword. I wonder where he got it from?" And she drew the power beam, with the sword-blade still entwined in it, toward her, and gazed up at the thousand-year-old steel as Gryffindor himself might have gazed after he had wrested it from Ragnuk I.

And Emerald, who had been watching the whole battle through the doorway, blinked and rubbed her eyes. No, it couldn't be; she had to be seeing things. Umbridge couldn't possibly be so stupid as to hold a deadly weapon directly above her chest, point downward, with nothing but a will-directed beam preventing it from plunging into her heart. And, if she were, surely Voldemort, with his Horcrux lying directly in the blade's potential path, wouldn't be so stupid as to let her.

But, yes, that did seem to be exactly what was happening. Emerald was amazed; she had often heard her parents say that arrogance was invariably the villain's downfall, but she'd never seen the point illustrated so vividly before. Evidently the Voldemort-fragment in the locket assumed that there was no way a mere sword-blade could hurt it (memories didn't travel between Horcruxes, it seemed), and Umbridge assumed that, now that she'd taken care of Hagrid and Neville, there was no need to worry about anything their companion in the fishnets could do. Well, both of them were in for a nasty surprise.

She took a deep breath, and waited for just the right moment. Yes, there it was: the tip of the sword was pointed straight at the Horcrux. She wouldn't get a clearer shot.

"EEEEE-EEEEEEEEE-EEEEE!"

It was the loudest, most piercing Canary Cry Emerald had ever cast. The effect was immediate. Umbridge froze in her place, all thought momentarily blasted from her mind, and the xanthic bonds by which her will had been holding the blade in the air dissipated like mist on a summer day.

For the briefest of instants, the blade seemed to hang suspended in the air, as though choosing the most advantageous spot to land; then it plummeted straight downwards. Emerald shuddered and averted her gaze, but the sickening crunch of steel hitting gold, the distant scream of the Horcrux, and the appalling gurgle that emerged from Dolores Umbridge, all told her what was happening quite as plainly as her eyes could have.

* * *

When she was sure it was over, she raised her head and stepped into the office. Still taking care not to look toward the desk, she followed the trail of tiny blood-drops on the carpet to the corner where Umbridge had thrown Hagrid's body; kneeling down, she picked this up, dusted it off with the edge of her skirt, and looked around for a suitable container to put it in. After a moment, her eyes lighted on a small, squat vase containing close-trimmed daisies; reaching up, she took this down, poured out the daisies and the water onto the floor, and placed Hagrid's tiny corpse inside the mouth of the vase, making him look rather like an Eskimo in a round, white-porcelain kayak. Then, and only then, did she dare to look at her handiwork of the last few minutes.

As she tried to keep herself from vomiting, she heard a commotion of feet outside the office door, and the elderly wizard she had spoken to earlier poked his head in through the doorway. "Good heavens!" he exclaimed. "What on earth… I never imagined… Security!" And he scampered away again, apparently followed by a great many of his fellow Ministry workers.

Emerald sighed. She had rather expected this part; one can't cast a Canary Cry in a crowded government building without attracting a certain amount of attention. Well, she supposed she ought to revive Neville before the gendarmes showed up.

She withdrew her wand from her jacket, walked over to the spot where Neville lay, and whispered, "_Aguamenti._" A small stream of water shot from her wand onto Neville's face, and he groaned and opened his eyes.

"What happened?" he said.

Emerald paused a moment to make the tally in her mind. "Well," she said, "Hagrid's dead, Umbridge is dead, the sword is broken, the Horcrux is destroyed, and I think we're about to be arrested."

Neville groaned. "_Akh tallak utama luo,_" he muttered.

"_Peshu nakali hayan torr,_" Emerald said automatically.

Neville blinked, and stared up at her. "What did you say?"

Emerald frowned. "Nothing," she said. "I was just finishing the proverb."

"Yes, of course you were," said Neville, "but how did you know the rest of the proverb?"

Emerald hesitated. "I don't know," she said. "I just… remembered it, suddenly."

"You couldn't," said Neville. "That's a Thanagarian proverb. There's no way a human could remember it."

Then a thought seemed to strike him; his face slowly changed colour, and he looked at Emerald with an expression that sent a shiver down her spine. "Unless…" He paused, and licked his lips. "Shayera?"

The word seemed to awaken something in Emerald, and she looked into Neville's piercing golden eyes as though she had never seen them before. "Katar?" she whispered.

The next moment, the two reincarnated lovers were enfolded in an embrace so passionate and all-consuming that they barely noticed when the security guards arrived.

* * *

_**Author's note:** I know, I know. But we had to have a Hawkgirl eventually - and, if you can't be two superheroes at once, what's the good of being a Mary Sue, I'd like to know? (Besides, the most desirable girl on Earth and Neville Longbottom - isn't there just something _right_ about that?)_


	19. Malice Musters at Malfoy Manor

"Aren't you a lovely thing, now?" Amycus Carrow cooed to one of Lucius Malfoy's prize peacocks, stroking its head with the tip of his enchanted umbrella. "I'll bet the hens come scurrying up from miles around when you open that tail."

His sister Alecto rolled her eyes. "Honestly, Amycus," she said, "what is it with you and birds lately? If I didn't know better, I'd swear you were in love with a Ravenclaw or something."

Amycus ignored this slur with the dignity appropriate to a Carrow, and the two kindred Death Eaters proceeded toward the front door of Malfoy Manor.

* * *

Noddy opened the door as they approached, and squealed excitedly. "Sir!" he exclaimed. "Master and Mistress Carrow is here!"

There was a noise of heavy footsteps in the hallway, and Lucius Malfoy appeared, clad (more or less to the Carrows' surprise) in a light-blue parka and ski goggles. "Well, well," he said with a slight smirk. "So you got here at last, did you?"

"Don't look at me," said Alecto. "We would have been here earlier, only this feather-brained brother of mine had to stop in Buckinghamshire and collect gruntles' eggs."

"An essential ingredient in many potions," Amycus defended himself. "How do you expect to make Murine Metamorphosis Mixture without…"

"Well, never mind," said Malfoy, with a wave of his hand. "As it happens, you're not the last. Snape seems to have been delayed on some intelligence matter or other; the Dark Lord doesn't expect him for at least another half-hour.

"Lovely outfit, by the way, Alecto," he added as the Carrows removed their cloaks and handed them to Noddy, revealing Alecto's short-skirted, magenta bodysuit and sapphire-encrusted tiara.

Alecto smiled. "Why, thank you, Lucius," she said. "Good to know that someone appreciates my royal robes."

Malfoy arched an eyebrow. "Royal robes?"

"Oh, yes, didn't you hear?" said Alecto. "I'm the new queen of the Zamarons."

"Really?" said Malfoy. "I thought you had to look like the old queen to get that job."

"When I killed her, I did," said Alecto. "Ever hear of Polyjuice Potion?"

Malfoy shook his head. "The things you miss, being in Azkaban," he said.

"Still," he added, twirling a crudely carved stick of Dahurian-larch wood in his hand, "it did give me the time I needed to complete my Freeze-Wand prototype. One oughtn't to complain."

Amycus chuckled. "I heard about that," he said. "That's what you broke out with, wasn't it?"

Malfoy nodded. "Against the full cohort of Azkaban guards, it probably wouldn't have done the job," he remarked. "But, with so many of the dementors having defected to our side, it was a fairly simple matter to reduce the rest to hooded stalagmites."

"Serves them right," muttered Amycus. "If the stupid creatures can't even figure out where their interests lie, they deserve to get frozen."

Malfoy and Alecto were very little inclined to dispute this statement, and so the little company advanced in silence to the drawing room.

When they arrived, they beheld a scene like none other in the six-hundred-year history of Malfoy Manor. Bellatrix Lestrange, in a leopard-print bodysuit complete with tail and ears, was lounging on the giant lap of her husband Rodolphus, who had returned from the grave on the previous Monday as an enormous, hulking white zombie. Antonin Dolohov, in a white lab coat and small, round spectacles, was standing in the corner, fiddling with a beaker filled with some sickly-looking green substance; the Carrows couldn't help noticing that he had much less hair than when they had seen him last. Indeed, the only person in the room who didn't seem to have had a major makeover recently was Voldemort himself, who was sitting in the centre of the room, listening intently to a small, rotund figure read aloud from a piece of parchment. (This latter figure was so heavily cloaked and hooded that nothing of its face could be made out, and only the distinctive, wheezing voice emerging from it revealed it to be Peter Pettigrew.)

Amycus let out what was intended to be a snort, although it came out sounding rather more like a squawk. "Quite the little lunatic asylum we've become lately, haven't we?" he whispered to his sister.

Alecto didn't respond; she was busy searching the room for one face that was conspicuous by its absence. "Where's Narcissa?" she said.

Malfoy's lip curled, and he said nothing. Bellatrix, on the other hand, seemed quite eager to volunteer the requested information. "My dear sister," she purred, "was escorted on dolphinback some weeks ago to a remote island in the Indian Ocean – an island that, besides being invisible, Unplottable, and shielded against every kind of curse you can think of, has its shores continually patrolled by the most fearsome creatures of the deep. Apparently, young Draco didn't quite trust his supposed father not to avenge his honour when he heard how Cissy cuckolded him sixteen years ago."

"And right he was," Malfoy muttered.

Voldemort, at this point, made a sharp, short, irritated sound that instantly silenced the entire room. After fixing each of his Death Eaters in turn with a menacing glare, he turned back to Pettigrew and waved his hand. "Continue, Wormtail."

The hooded figure coughed nervously. "Well, that appears to be all, My Lord," he said, "except… oh, yes. It seems that Fenrir Greyback is seeking asylum among our organisation, since he has recently had to flee the Argyll werewolf clan."

Voldemort raised his head in surprise. "Now, why was that?"

"Well, it seems that that radioactive meteorite he ran into a while back turned out to have a dramatic effect on his full-moon form," said Pettigrew, "and the Argyll werewolves no longer trusted him when they learned that he was no longer one of their kind."

"'No longer one of their kind'?" Voldemort repeated. "You mean he isn't a werewolf anymore?"

"Apparently not, My Lord."

"Well, what is he, then?"

Pettigrew's old Marauder puckishness seized him momentarily, and he chuckled beneath his hood. "Well… let's just say that we may have to call him Fenrir Silverback from now on."

Voldemort was silence for a moment, processing that; then he threw back his head and let out a high, cackling laugh. "Oh, marvelous!" he said. "Yes, by all means, send him an owl and invite him to our little encampment. Lucius, you don't mind setting up a were-gorilla in one of your guest bedrooms, do you?"

"Not in the least, My Lord," said Lucius with a stiff bow.

"Excellent," said Voldemort, dismissing Pettigrew with a flick of his hand. "Well, then, as soon as Snape arrives…"

As if in response, the fireplace suddenly blazed green, and Severus Snape stepped out. "Forgive my tardiness, My Lord," he said, bowing to Voldemort. "With the Headmaster away, those of us on the senior faculty find odd demands on our time springing up continually."

"Yes, yes, Severus," said Voldemort impatiently. "But, tell me, what have you found out about this attack at the Ministry?"

"Very little that I did not already know, My Lord," said Snape. "The young man was the Longbottom boy, as we surmised; the young woman appears to be a foreign-exchange student of some description. What grudge they had against Dolores Umbridge, I am unable to surmise – though I will do them the justice of saying that it was not difficult to form a grudge against Dolores Umbridge."

"Were they associated with this League you have described?" Voldemort demanded.

"The Longbottom boy's regalia would tend to suggest that," said Snape. "I cannot imagine, however, that they killed Umbridge on the orders of the Justice League of Hogwarts. It would be more plausible to suppose that they had gone rogue."

Voldemort shook his head. "Unlikely," he said, more to himself than to Snape. "I knew Augusta Longbottom; she would not raise her grandson to nurse private vendettas. The Umbridge woman's death must have been a side effect of something else – but what could be so important to Dumbledore that he would send his students to…"

His meditations were interrupted by a sudden, high-pitched shriek. "Curses! Foiled again!"

All eyes turned to Dolohov, who was scraping a vermilion residue from his beaker. Noticing the sudden silence, he glanced up, and coloured. "Er… forgive me, My Lord. I had no wish to disturb you; it's just that this miserable Kryptonite refuses to solidify properly."

"That's the stuff you're planning to use against Dumbledore?" said Alecto.

"If we can get it to behave, yes," said Dolohov. "It's fine in its liquid state, but, whenever I attempt to cool it to a usable temperature, it turns red on me." He frowned. "Maybe there's some contaminant in the atmosphere. Your house didn't pass through a cosmic cloud recently, did it, Lucius?"

"You would have to ask Noddy about that," said Malfoy coolly.

Dolohov sighed. "Well, anyway, chalk up another one for the rubbish heap," he said, and turned to dump the crimson fragments into the fireplace.

Then he blinked. "Say, Lucius," he said, "what's the matter with your fire?"

Everyone turned, and, to their great surprise, saw the green flames of a Floo-powered fire still blazing from the logs in the fireplace. All eyes turned to Snape, as the last to arrive via the Floo network; the Hogwarts DDA master seemed unperturbed, but his eyes darted to Voldemort's face for the briefest of moments as he spoke. "Ah, I see," he said. "My apologies. When I enchanted my office fire to make the journey here, I must have used the new variant on Floo powder that Horace Slughorn and I have been experimenting with recently."

"Variant?" Rodolphus grunted suspiciously.

Snape turned to the dim-witted zombie with an expression of barely controlled disdain. "Yes, Rodolphus, a variant," he said. "A variant that leaves the pathway open until the user travels back the way he came, so that one only need use one dose for a full round trip. The Headmaster proposed it some weeks ago; he believes it may be a useful wartime economy."

"Well, for heaven's sake, Severus, go back through and turn it off!" Amycus squawked. "The last thing we need is an open portal to our headquarters sitting right in the middle of Hogwarts, just waiting for Dumbledore to walk through!"

Snape sighed. "Let me assure you, Amycus," he said, "that Albus Dumbledore is not about to come through Lucius's fireplace. In the first place, he is not at Hogwarts at the moment – as I remarked when I first came in, though perhaps it was asking too much of you to listen to me. In the second place, given the magical strength of the locks on my office door, I sincerely doubt that even he could open it without at least an hour's worth of effort – and no lesser wizard could do it at all.

"Still," he added thoughtfully, staring at the verdant fire, "I confess that I, too, will feel more secure once the portal is closed." He turned, and bowed to Voldemort. "If My Lord will permit me?"

"You wish to pass back through?" said Voldemort.

Snape inclined his head. "I would, of course, return by traditional Floo powder if My Lord so wished," he said, "although, since I have already conveyed what little news I had, it would perhaps be somewhat redundant to…"

"One moment, Severus," said Voldemort, his tone turning suddenly silky. "You know, it is scarcely like you to use the wrong Floo powder."

"The best of us make mistakes, My Lord," said Severus.

"Perhaps," said Voldemort. "Or perhaps… Amycus, may I see that umbrella of yours?"

This sudden change of subject took all the Death Eaters aback, Amycus not least. Nonetheless, since anything less than immediate obedience was likely to be fatal, he quickly withdrew his umbrella and handed it to the Dark Lord.

Voldemort ran his fingers over it with the elegance of a connoisseur. "Have you seen these little toys of Amycus's, Severus?" he said. "He tells me he got the idea from our old friend Hagrid. Simply incorporate a wand core into the pole of the umbrella, and you have an inconspicuous accoutrement that looks nothing like a wand, yet can be used to perform many useful spells."

"Admirably ingenious, My Lord," said Snape. If Voldemort's behaviour was unnerving him, he showed no outward sign.

"Many useful spells," Voldemort repeated. "As, for instance – _Incendio!_"

A sudden jet of flame shot out from the tip of the umbrella, and several Death Eaters let out little yelps of surprise. They were nothing, however, to the cry of agony that emerged from Severus Snape. The hitherto unflappable double agent was suddenly doubled over, one arm shielding his face, and trembling like a leaf – and, as if this weren't strange enough, he also seemed to be turning green.

"Well, well," said Voldemort, his tone frigid with irony. "So Dumbledore and his League recruited you as their resident Green Martian, did they? And just when were you planning on telling me, Severus?"

Slowly and painfully, Snape straightened himself. He was breathing heavily, and his newly massive frame was still trembling with weakness, but his spirit was apparently unconquered; he returned Voldemort's gaze without fear and said nothing.

"I wonder what other secrets you have been keeping from me," said Voldemort. "Let's just see, shall we? _Legilimens!_"

In his weakened state, Snape was no match for his once-supposed master's Legilimentic power. He winced visibly as Voldemort's spell penetrated his mind, but no other sign of emotion escaped him. The same could not be said, however, for Voldemort himself, whose scarlet eyes widened in something resembling terror as he saw into Snape's recent memories.

He whispered a single word, in a voice both hoarse and fierce. "Wormtail."

Pettigrew scampered forward, his hands trembling as he adjusted his hood. "Y… yes, My Lord?"

Voldemort thrust the flaming umbrella into his hand. "Guide this traitor to the deepest, darkest cellar this house possesses," he said. "Either you or one of your colleagues must be with him at all times, and under no circumstances shall he be allowed more than two yards from an open flame. When I decide how best to deal with him, I shall call you."

Pettigrew nodded, and grasped Snape's arm. Snape's lip curled, but he made no resistance as Pettigrew led him from the room.

* * *

As the two sets of footsteps disappeared down the hall, five of the six remaining Death Eaters exchanged uneasy looks, but didn't dare to speak. Bellatrix, however, had always been quick to voice her mind, and the mantle she had lately assumed had done nothing to slow her down. "Well done, My Lord!" she exclaimed. "Oh, how I wish I had been close enough to get my claws into that filthy double-crosser! But perhaps you might let me do the honours when the time comes?" And she flexed her blade-tipped fingers suggestively.

Voldemort laughed. "We shall see, Bellatrix," he said, and turned his gaze to the fireplace.

Malfoy, noticing this, was reminded of the spell that was still active on the fire. "Er… pardon me, My Lord," he said, "but perhaps I might be permitted to observe that, as we now have a passageway into the very heart of Hogwarts, it might be to our advantage to… well, to make use of it."

"Thank you, Lucius, I had thought of that," said Voldemort dryly. "And so, it would seem, had Severus. One of the memories his mind exposed to me was of him modifying the altered Floo powder so that only a Green Martian could use it; if one of your colleagues attempted to pass through, the forces involved would tear him into his component molecules. You don't want that, I'm sure."

Malfoy was forced to admit that he did not.

"Very well, then," said Voldemort. "You are dismissed. All of you."

The Death Eaters were mildly startled by this peremptory command, but they obediently rose from their seats and filed quietly out of the drawing room. Voldemort was left alone, stroking Nagini and gazing into the emerald fire; his thoughts succeeded each other in rapid profusion, but there was no longer anyone around who could read his mind.


	20. The Other Side of the Coin

As Pettigrew led a weak and trembling Severus Snape to the Malfoy family dungeons, the latter silently cursed the name of Antonin Dolohov. Not for exposing him; the modified Floo powder had been a long shot in any event, and it wasn't as though he had had long to live anyway. (The others might have forgotten about the Unbreakable Vow he had taken; he had not.) What annoyed him was that Dolohov's outburst had interrupted a chain of thought in Voldemort's mind that would, Snape felt certain, have led eventually to his making a mental list of his Horcruxes. It was not Snape's impending death that distressed him; it was that he would die without having learned, and telepathically conveyed to Dumbledore, the nature of the mysterious seventh Horcrux. That and the destruction of Nagini were the two tasks that Dumbledore had entrusted him with, and he had failed at both.

And as he brooded on this, the corridor that he and his gaoler were traversing made a sudden, sharp bend, and Pettigrew ran face-first into the wall. For a moment, he was dazed (though not, to Snape's regret, dazed enough to lose control over the magical fire in Amycus's umbrella); then he shook his head, muttered something along the lines of "can't see anything under this blasted cloak", and reached up a hand and drew back his hood.

And, at the sight that was thus revealed, Snape recoiled in sudden shock – for, though the left side of Pettigrew's face was as round and pink as it had always been, the right side was a distorted monstrosity, barely recognisable as a human visage. A yellow, bloodshot eye stared out of a mass of swollen, dark-purple tissue, the lip was drawn back over the teeth in a perpetual grimace, and what hair remained on the crown had turned an unhealthy off-white colour.

Over the course of a lengthy career as Death Eater and Hogwarts Potions master, Snape had perforce developed a very strong stomach, but this unholy sight gave even him a spasm of nausea. "Pettigrew!" he exclaimed. "Moons of Mars, what's happened to you?"

Pettigrew raised a hand to his face, and scowled with its usable half. "Nagini," he said briefly.

At Snape's enquiring look, he elaborated. "On the Thursday before last, I failed to be as punctual with the Dark Lord's supper as he would have wished, and he… ah… chose to let Nagini's fangs express his displeasure. After I had been sufficiently punished, he had Dolohov brew a remedy for the poison, but he left the other effects as a reminder to do better in the future."

"I see," said Snape slowly. His mind – the only part of him that the fire had not weakened – was working rapidly. Could it be… yes, there was just the barest chance…

"I suppose," he said, "that, as a result of this little escapade, there is no love lost between you and the Dark Lord's pet viper. Am I correct?"

Pettigrew shot a sudden, frightened look at him. "What… what do you mean?" he stammered. "I revere the Dark Lord above all things. What is dear to him is dearer still to me. I…"

"Pettigrew, stop babbling rote protestations of loyalty and listen to me," Snape snapped. "Nagini is more than just the Dark Lord's familiar. Dumbledore and I have reason to believe that she contains a fragment – one-seventh, to be exact – of his magical soul. The Justice League of Hogwarts has been formed for one purpose and one purpose only: to seek out and destroy all six of the objects that the Dark Lord so treated. That was what Longbottom and the girl were doing at the Ministry; that is what I was attempting to do tonight.

"As you saw, I failed. The Dark Lord will no longer trust me anywhere near his precious serpent. But he seems to be perfectly willing to let _you_ approach her. Now, I know that there is no love lost between us. I also know that you have been the Dark Lord's willing sycophant for so long that it is difficult for you even to conceive of rebelling against him. But I cannot believe that any friend of James Potter's – and certainly not one of his three great accomplices in mayhem – could have his face mangled by a tame viper and not wish to exact suitable revenge on the person responsible."

He let that sink in for a few seconds, and then said. "There are five major materials noxious enough to banish a soul fragment from a Horcrux. Do you know what they are?"

Pettigrew licked his lips. "I… I think so," he said. "Basilisk venom, Fiendfyre, Quandoquidem Lightning, that liquefied hatred they brew in Africa, and, um… Narcissa's cooking?"

Snape rolled his eyes. "Close enough," he said. "Now, I do not expect you to create any of these on your own. But, should one of them by some outrageous chance appear in this vicinity…"

"Severus, you must be mad!" Pettigrew exclaimed. "If I did this, it would mean my death!"

"The Peter Pettigrew I knew in school would not have hesitated to risk his life over a grandiose revenge scheme," Snape retorted. "Particularly not when he already owes that life to James Potter's son."

That stopped Pettigrew for a long moment. "How… how did you know about that?" he whispered.

Snape merely arched an eyebrow.

Pettigrew swallowed spasmodically for several seconds. When he spoke again, his voice had dropped to a hoarse whine. "But, Severus, be reasonable. The Dark Lord won't just kill me if I succeed at this; he'll kill me if I even think about it around him. You know what a Legilimens he is. Now, what good will it do you and your League if I die without having done anything?"

Severus had been waiting for this. "Do you have a Sickle?" he enquired.

Pettigrew blinked. "A Sickle?" he repeated. "Um… yes, somewhere, I think." He groped in his robes for a moment or two (with the hand that wasn't holding his wand, of course) and withdrew the small silver coin.

Snape took it from him and drew it across the stone wall, leaving a deep scratch on one side. "Do you see this, Pettigrew?" he said, exposing his work to the onetime Marauder.

Pettigrew nodded.

"Good," said Snape. "Put it back away. Now, I want you to cast a spell that will put out the fire in Amycus's umbrella for five seconds – no more, no less. In that time, if I concentrate, I should be able so to affect your mind that you will not remember any of this conversation – but also that, should you see any of the five materials I mentioned earlier, you will be compelled to take out that Sickle and toss it. If it lands with the blank side up, you will still remember nothing, and you need never think of killing Nagini again. If, however, it lands with the marked side up, you will instantly remember everything we have just said, and you must at that instant seize Nagini and thrust her amid the material. Is that security enough for you?"

It was the most desperate gamble he had ever made. Putting out the fire, even for a moment, was an act of treachery to Voldemort in its own right; under ordinary circumstances, it would never even have occurred to Snape to demand it of a Death Eater, even one as conflicted as Pettigrew. But it was now the only chance he had – and Severus Snape was not a man to leave any chance neglected.

There was a long silence; then Pettigrew said, in a voice so faint as to be barely audible, "All right."

He whispered the words, and the fire in the umbrella snuffed out, leaving the corridor in a momentary Stygian darkness.

_One bubotuber, two bubotuber, three bubotuber, four bubotuber, five bubotuber_ – and, with a _pfft_, the flames leaped back into life, and Pettigrew blinked and shook his head as though just emerging from sleep. "Well, Severus, what are you waiting for?" he said, pulling his hood back over his head. "This way."

Snape allowed himself to be conducted, weak and trembling, down the corridor once again, but now a secret smile was playing about his lips. He had slightly misled Pettigrew on the extent of his powers; constructing the buried memory trigger in his mind had taken, not five seconds of intense concentration, but three. The other two seconds he had used to plant two quick thoughts: one in Voldemort's mind, the other in the mind of a fellow Leaguer three thousand miles away. With any luck, the three things together would ensure a satisfactory outcome, and he could go to the grave having accomplished at least half his purpose. If not – well, he had done his best.

* * *

Draco walked over to the camp that Cho and Dumbledore had pitched, sat down on a log, and began wringing the river water out of his hair. "Stupid freshwater fish," he muttered.

"Oh?" said Dumbledore.

"I understand I'm not officially their king," said Draco, "but they could at least give me a straight answer when I ask a question. Instead of which, I get this song and dance about 'well, in our grandfathers' days it was rumoured…'"

"So we still don't know whether You-Know-Who ever stayed in this part of Albania," said Cho.

"I wouldn't say that, exactly," said Draco cautiously. "There are a couple of things about the water itself that remind me of what our house used to be like when Father was hiding illegal potions under the floorboards. Nothing definite, but I think we should stick close to this river."

Dumbledore nodded. "Yes, I was noticing some odd phenomena on the microscopic level myself," he said. "All right, now, let me see, the Buenë has its source in Lake Scutari, and it flows from thence to… great Scott, Miss Chang, are you all right?"

Cho had suddenly gone rigid as a board, her eyes wide yet unfocused, as though she were listening to her own heartbeat. As Draco and Dumbledore stared in alarm, she opened her mouth and recited carefully, "_Elkcis, nehw Wergittep sessot uoy, emoc pu Doog Sdaeh._"

Draco blinked. "How's that?"

Cho shrugged, and seemed to snap instantly back to normal. "I'm not sure," she said. "Professor Snape just appeared in my head all of a sudden and told me to say that."

Dumbledore repeated her words under his breath. "Now that's unsettling," he murmured. "Why should Severus be concerned to… unless…"

He became aware that his two students were staring at him, and roused himself. "Well, I daresay we shall find out his reasons by and by," he said. "In the meantime, let us continue with our own mission, shall we? It would be embarrassing if the others all destroyed their assigned Horcruxes before we had even learned the nature of ours."

He spoke lightly enough, but his mind, as he rose from the ground and led the way upstream, was far from sanguine. If Severus was having to draw on another Leaguer's powers, it could only mean that his own were inadequate to his situation – which, given the Martian repertory, was hardly a comforting thought.


	21. Slytherin Guile Triumphant

The next day, at four o'clock in the afternoon, Lord Voldemort's associates (including Greyback, who had arrived around noon) gathered on the veranda of Malfoy Manor to watch their master do justice to Severus Snape. It was a moment of great solemnity – or would have been, if Bellatrix Lestrange hadn't been present.

"Have a Yohum, Severus?" she enquired, holding out one of Honeydukes's famous chocolate-and-cream sandwich cookies to the Green Martian that sat bound in one of Malfoy's old armchairs.

Snape made no reply, but merely gave her a withering look and kept his lips tightly shut.

"Oh, come now," said Bellatrix. "They're your favourite kind. Dark on the outside, light on the inside: how can you resist?"

A burst of laughter from the other Death Eaters greeted this witticism. Snape shut his eyes stoically and reminded himself that this would all soon be over; the thought consoled him somewhat, although that high-pitched "Heh! Heh! Heh!" of Dolohov's was still rather difficult to take.

"Enough."

The Death Eaters sobered instantly at the cold voice of the Dark Lord. Bellatrix quickly stashed the Yohums back away and smoothed out the wrinkles in her costume as Voldemort strode out onto the veranda.

He seated himself on the chair that Malfoy had prepared for him, with Nagini curled about his ankles and the cloaked figure of Pettigrew crouching beside him, and stared at his one-time servant with a look of malicious amusement. "Well, Severus," he said, "I wonder if you know what I have planned for you?"

For answer, Snape nodded toward the torch burning in the sconce just above his head.

"Well responded," said Voldemort. "I suppose I shall have to tell you, then. Yesterday afternoon, shortly after Wormtail escorted you to your new quarters, I was pondering various means by which I might satisfactorily express my displeasure at your choices. I knew it would have to be something special; after all, it isn't every day that you discover that one of your most trusted servants has been secretly working for your greatest enemy all along."

His face twisted briefly into an enraged scowl before reassuming its more placid expression. "I considered various possibilities," he went on. "Cruciatus Ultima, Possideo, your own charming _Sectumsempra_ – but none of them seemed quite horrific enough. And, in any event, I had no way of knowing if any of them would work on your new form.

"And then, quite unexpectedly, it came to me – fully formed into my mind, like a gift from some unknown power. What is the one thing that everyone knows Green Martians can't withstand? Why, fire, of course. And what is the most horrible type of fire known to wizardkind – and the only type, incidentally, that it is the prerogative of Dark wizards to summon and control?"

Snape's eyes widened, and Voldemort chuckled. "Yes, you weren't expecting that, were you?" he said. "When that little ginger-headed Mudblood lured you away from my service, you never dreamed what lay in store for you. Such delicious folly."

The mention of Lily Evans had a strengthening effect on Snape. With her image in his mind, he trusted himself to reply to the Dark Lord's taunts. "Yes, perhaps I am a fool," he said. "What could be more foolish, after all, than to put oneself in the way of certain death – except, perhaps, to rend oneself in pieces seeking to avert death?" He raised his hand mockingly. "As one fool to another, I salute you…" He paused for the briefest of moments to gather his courage, and then finished, "…Voldemort."

A collective gasp emerged from the assembled Death Eaters, and their master's eyes blazed with fury. "So," he hissed. "You fancy yourself a hero now, do you, Severus? Well, let us see how heroic you look when the fiends are feasting on your flesh!"

He raised his wand and made a fearsome slash in the air. A circle of violet light appeared around Malfoy's armchair, and within that circle sprang up a blazing menagerie of fiery monsters that swarmed about Snape, blackening and shrivelling his body wherever they alighted.

The Death Eaters cackled with delight – all but Pettigrew. The instant he had seen the Fiendfyre, he had, without conscious volition, pulled a Sickle out of his robes and tossed it in the air; now, as he stared down at the deep, white scratch on its upturned side, the memory of the promise Snape had extracted from him flooded back into his horrified consciousness.

What followed was perhaps the proudest moment in Pettigrew's none-too-proud life. Without a moment's hesitation, he bent down, grabbed Nagini by the nearest coil, and gave her a vicious tug. With the enormous strength of his silver arm, one tug was all that was needed: all four legs broke off Voldemort's chair, the Dark Lord fell sprawling onto the floor of the veranda, and Pettigrew wrapped the furiously writhing Nagini around himself and dove for the violet circle.

Sheer bewilderment paralysed the other Death Eaters; none of them could imagine what their comrade might be up to. Voldemort, however, saw all too well what was going on, and, with a sudden surge of fear, he raised his wand hand to stop Pettigrew in his tracks. Only then did he realise that his wand had fallen out of his hand when he hit the ground; he looked around frantically, and was just in time to see it skitter off the edge of the veranda and drop onto the lawn below.

"My wand!" he shouted.

Rodolphus was galvanised. "Lestrange fetch!" he bellowed; leaping off the veranda with an earth-shaking thud, he picked up the delicate rod and tossed it to his master. Or at least he tried to, but the superhuman strength that had accompanied his resurrection betrayed him; instead of making a gentle arc in the air and landing at Voldemort's side, the wand soared over the roof of Malfoy Manor and out of sight (although the startled peacock cries that greeted the Death Eaters' ears suggested that it had landed somewhere in the front yard).

"Oops," said Rodolphus.

Bellatrix shot her husband a glare that could have dissolved limestone. "Here, My Lord!" she said. "Use mine!"

Voldemort took the walnut wand and raised it; then he lowered it again, and sighed. "No," he said. "It is too late."

And it was. In the half-minute that it had taken Rodolphus to fail to retrieve his master's wand, Pettigrew had reached the violet circle and thrust himself and Nagini into it. The Fiendfyre was delighted to have some new food within its reach, and it fell upon man and snake with dispatch; by the time Voldemort was in a position to cast a spell, his sixth Horcrux could no longer be saved.

As the cursed flames raged around them, Snape and Pettigrew gazed into each other's eyes. Never before in their lives had they been on the same side: when Pettigrew had been a Marauder, Snape had been his friends' favourite victim; when Pettigrew had turned to the Dark, the consequences of that very betrayal had caused Snape to defect to the Light. Yet now, in the heart of a bewitched inferno, moments away from death, these two opposing spies had found common cause.

What was left of Snape's mouth moved slowly, and a hoarse whisper emerged from his almost-melted throat. "Paid… in full, Wormtail."

Pettigrew could no longer respond, but the proud gleam in his good eye said everything that needed to be said.

* * *

When his two betrayers had both been completely consumed, Voldemort wearily raised Bellatrix's wand and flicked it spasmodically. Fiendfyre and warding spell both vanished, and all that remained to mark the scene of destruction was a pile of miscellaneous ash, mixed with the viscous, dark-green fluid that was all that remained of Severus Snape.

Alecto Carrow wrinkled her nose. "Charming," she muttered. "I can see why you lose so many house-elves, Lucius."

Neither Malfoy nor anyone else answered her. All eyes were focussed on Voldemort, who had risen to his feet and was gazing fixedly into the distance. "Five destroyed," he whispered, his voice almost shaking. "Only one remains… and that one…"

Suddenly he seemed to rouse himself, and turned to his followers. "Antonin," he said sharply, "brew a new batch of Kryptonite and bring it to me. Its colour is unimportant, but I must have it within the hour."

"Yes, My Lord," said Dolohov, and scurried off into the Manor.

"Alecto," Voldemort continued, "if you enter my private quarters, you will find a large, green-and-purple suit of enchanted armour that I have been working on for some time. Bring it here; I wish to be dressed in it."

"Yes, My Lord."

"As for the rest of you," said Voldemort, his gaze travelling slowly over Malfoy, Amycus, Greyback, and the Lestranges, "I only advise you to all bring warm cloaks. Hogwarts can be a cold place in February."


	22. A Battle Begins

A tall, rigid silhouette framed itself against the full moon that shone above Hogwarts School. It looked rather like a benevolent spirit, sent to guard the castle from harm – which, in a sense, was exactly what it was. Voldemort's surge of fear, earlier that afternoon, had been quite clearly received by Harry through his scar; when he had excused himself from Potions class and quickly gathered together the other resident Leaguers, they had agreed that the Dark Lord's next move would almost certainly involve an attack on Hogwarts, and Dean had accordingly been assigned to stand sentry and notify them when the Death Eaters appeared. It was his metallic body that was now gleaming in the moonlight as he hovered over the castle.

One might have thought that he would have made more of an effort to be inconspicuous, but there was more than a soupçon of vainglory about Dean Thomas, and his fellow Leaguers' choice of him as sentry (made, in truth, mostly because he didn't need to sleep) had rather gone to his head. He had spent the past few hours striking heroic ærial attitudes and painting gratifying pictures of himself as the guardian angel of Hogwarts, until now he was barely watching the sky at all. Even Hermione's stern warning not to alarm the other students had been forgotten; he was actually hoping that there were some first years sneaking around the grounds after hours, who might happen to look up and see their valiant defender looming above them.

"Don't worry, kids," he murmured in the back of his mechanical throat. "No harm's going to come to you tonight, not while the Crimson Cyclone stands on guard. Just let any Death Eater try to get past, and he'll get a taste of what 'gale force' really…"

K-BLAM!

A sudden, overwhelming burst of energy surged through Dean's android body, fusing or disconnecting nearly all his major circuits. His propellant system was the first to fail; as he tumbled backward in the air and plummeted to the ground below, he caught sight of two smirking figures hovering in the air behind him, and cursed himself. _Brilliant, Thomas,_ he thought. _You'll never learn, will you? In this kind of game, cockiness can kill you – and probably the rest of your school, too._

Straining his rapidly stiffening arm, he just managed to reach and activate his League signal device; then darkness overcame him, and he knew no more.

* * *

"Well done, Alecto," said Voldemort dispassionately, as the two of them alighted beside Dean's inert form. "After we finish conquering the school, I must see about duplicating that crown of yours magically."

Alecto shook her head. "No," she said. "Forgive me, My Lord, but that is precisely what you mustn't do."

"Oh?" said Voldemort. "And why not?"

"Because," said Alecto, "if you were to desecrate a great Zamaron relic in that fashion, I, as ruler of the Zamaron race and protector of its sacred traditions, would have no choice but to reduce you to undifferentiated ashes."

Only after the words were out of her mouth did she realise what she had just said, and to whom. She winced, expecting Voldemort to raise one of his suit's wand-tipped fingers and blast her into oblivion. Instead, to her surprise, he merely arched an eyebrow and said quietly, "Well, then it will it be your blood I take next time."

Alecto hadn't considered this. It was matter for reflection; as the dolohovium airship containing the others lowered itself onto the shore, she turned toward the castle to ponder it. And, as a result, she was the first to see the red, boy-sized blur zooming through the castle door – and the giant, bat-eared figure bursting through the house-elves' entrance – and the young woman flying out of the Ravenclaw Tower window, sheathed in green light.

"My Lord!" she exclaimed.

Voldemort turned, and curled his lip in a sardonic smile. "Ah," he said. "The welcoming committee has arrived."

Greyback, who had metamorphosed into his new gorilla form somewhere over the Pennines, beat his chest and bellowed fiercely; Lucius and Amycus drew their respective weapons, and Dolohov and Bellatrix cackled with delight. Ever since that fateful Halloween night in 1982, all of Voldemort's loyal followers had dreamed of the battle that would bring them parity with the hated Dumbledore and his followers; now, at last, that battle was joined – and what a battle it promised to be!

"Shall we start in on them, My Lord?" said Bellatrix, licking her lips.

"It would seem that we already have," said Voldemort, with a nod to the scarlet android lying on the ground. "By all means, take down as many of them as you can – only leave Harry Potter alone for the time being. I have something special planned for him…"

* * *

Inside the school dormitories, chaos reigned supreme. If the commotion outside hadn't wakened the other students, the commotion inside, as the other Leaguers present responded to Dean's distress signal, certainly had. (Except for the Slytherin students, whose dormitories were so far below the rest of the school that the noise never reached them. Only at breakfast the next morning did they discover, to their chagrin, that they had slept through the most sensational night in Hogwarts's thousand-year history – and also, incidentally, that Horace Slughorn was now their acting Head of House.)

The scene in Gryffindor Tower was typical. The common room was filled to bursting with students from all seven years; it was all that the two prefects, Alina More and Todd Gardner, could do to keep the more reckless among them from sneaking outside and taking on the Death Eaters themselves. ("But I'm a Legionnaire!" protested one particularly small and helpless first year. "Or I would be, if Miss Granger had finished approving our bylaws. See, I can make things heavier!") Colin Creevey, meanwhile, was being smothered with questions from fellow students who assumed that, as an honorary League member, he knew exactly what was going on outside. In vain did he protest that his privileges were limited to his own signal device and a gold stickpin with the letters JLH on it; everyone just assumed that he was sworn to secrecy.

In the midst of all this, the fireplace suddenly blazed green, and then abruptly became filled with a writhing, squirming mass of red, pink, and black. Several of the younger students screamed, and jumped back toward the sofa; Todd and Alina themselves drew their wands, only to relax them again when they recognised the voices coming from the shape.

"Hey, wait a minute; what…"

"…fireplace seems so much larger when you're…"

"Ginny, get your bow out of my…"

"…I beg your pardon, that's our _leg_…"

And the thing, with one last, mighty heave, tumbled out of the fireplace and landed sprawling on the floor, where it resolved itself into the individual forms of Ron, Ginny, and Fred and George Weasley. For some moments, the four of them lay dazed on the carpet, staring vacantly at the ceiling as the others stared in awe at them; then Fred, who on this occasion was the first to recover, raised his head and glanced around in enquiry. "So, what's up?"

He received a roomful of blank looks in response. "We were hoping that you could tell us," said Todd. "All we know is that Harry and Hermione rushed out of the castle a few minutes ago, there's been all kinds of strange noises outside, and Natalie McDonald thinks she saw You-Know-Who fly past her window."

"Well, that's quite enough to be going on with," said George, molding his side of the twins' body into some semblance of battle-readiness. "Good thing we spent the morning rearming you two in the Spidercave, isn't it?"

Neither of his younger siblings answered right away; they had both gone a trifle pale, doubtless reflecting that Spiderangs and trick arrows were, after all, rather poor protection against an army of Dark wizards. After a second or two, however, they managed to rally somewhat. "Um, yes," said Ginny, forcing a strained smile to her face. "Yes, it's very lucky, isn't it, Ron?"

"Leprechaun," said Ron, drawing a bone-dry tongue across his equally dry lips.

The twins exchanged looks. "Sad, isn't it?" said Fred.

"Very," said George.

"Here we spend all this time trying to instill the younger members of our family with proper Gryffindor bravado…"

"…to give them role models to look up to…"

"…even to build personalised arsenals for them…"

"…and then, when it really comes to the point, they start shaking in their shoes at the first sign of danger." George shook his head. "What is the next generation coming to, I wonder?"

"Now wait a minute…" said Ron.

But his voice was drowned out as Fred raised his. "Still, we mustn't be too hard on them," he said. "After all, they still have frail human bodies, with internal organs and everything."

"True," said George. "Under those circumstances, it's quite natural to be timid in the face of mortal peril. Reasonable, even."

"Quite reasonable," said Fred. "So I suppose it's up to us to go and defend the family honour. Shall we, _mon frère_?"

"After you, _mi hermano_," said George.

They turned toward the portrait hole and rose to their feet. Ron and Ginny, however, were faster, and the twins found themselves staring down the barrel of, respectively, a Crystallisation Arrow and a Spider-Sac filled with paint thinner.

"All right, you two," said Ron through his teeth, "you've made your point. Now get this one: _No-one_ leaves a Weasley behind. I don't care how much more vulnerable we are than you; so long as we're part of the same League, you're stuck with us, and you'd better learn to like it."

"That's right," said Ginny. "The four of us go down together, or we don't go down at all."

At that, the twins smiled broadly. "That's more like it," said Fred. "Knew there were lions somewhere behind those masks. All right, together it is – and let's hurry, before all the good Death Eaters get taken, and we have to settle for You-Know-Who's accountant or something."

The others smiled back, and lowered their weapons again. The portrait hole swung open, and, as the entire student body of the House of Gryffindor stood up and applauded, the four Weasley siblings headed out to do battle with the forces of evil.

As their footsteps disappeared down the corridor, a thoughtful silence descended on the Gryffindor common room – a silence that was broken, after perhaps thirty seconds, by a certain small and helpless first year. "See?" he said. "They don't even have powers! If they can do it, why can't I…"

"Go back to bed, Keller," said Alina firmly.


	23. Perils of the Deep

Meanwhile, at the base of that same tower, Hermione Granger of Themyscira was in a tight spot. When she and her fellow defenders of Hogwarts had engaged the Death Eaters, she had ended up facing Amycus Carrow; at the time, it had seemed almost a comical mismatch of powers, but Carrow had turned out to be quite skilful with that magic umbrella of his, and he had kept Hermione so busy deflecting his curses with her bracelets that she hadn't yet had any opportunity to actually fight.

"_Crucio!_" Amycus squawked. "_Sectumsempra! Tarantallega!_"

_Please, let him not think of _Avis_, _Hermione prayed as she worked her wrists frantically. She couldn't imagine why he, of all wizards, hadn't already thought of _Avis_, but she was grateful for small favours. She wasn't at all sure that she could handle attacking birds and spell bolts at the same time; as it was, it was all she could do to make sure that none of the deflected spells hit her colleagues.

"_Stupefy!_" said Amycus. "_Avada Kedavra! Petrificus_… awwk!"

An enormous, bright-green eagle had suddenly appeared between the two of them, its wings outspread, its eyes blazing, and its talons reaching hungrily towards the portly Death Eater. It only lasted an instant before vanishing as quickly as it had appeared, but, in that instant, Amycus dropped his guard; the next instant, Hermione was upon him, and landed a quick uppercut on his left temple that took him out of commission for the remainder of the battle.

"Thanks, Luna," she said, glancing upward.

"Don't mention it," said the Ravenclaw Green Lantern, her cloak of ring power giving her a vaguely ethereal look as she hovered overhead. "You reacted very well, I thought. Your body must be better at adapting to new ideas than your mind is.

"Oh, here's Neville," she added, as a winged shadow fell between the moon and Hermione (who was still trying to think of an appropriate response to Luna's last comment). "Hello, Neville. I thought you were in jail."

"We were," said Neville, "but they dropped most of the charges after we showed them the Horcrux, and Gran paid our bail on the rest. But listen, Luna, you ought to get inside; we've rounded up most of the Death Eaters in there, but Rodolphus Lestrange is causing some trouble. I took out Bellatrix," he added with quiet satisfaction.

As Luna congratulated him and flew off, Hermione returned her attention to the unconscious Death Eater at her feet. After dragging him over to a nearby tree next to his sister (whom Dobby had taken out shortly before), she took his umbrella, broke it in half with one heave of her Amazon muscles, and prepared to throw the pieces into the sea.

Then, just as she was arching back her arm, a jet of intense, bone-chilling cold hit her in the small of the back. Automatically, she turned her head to see what was behind her – but that was the only movement she could make before the cold spread, with the rapidity of pain itself, to all the rest of her body. In a matter of seconds, she found herself frozen in place – too stiff to move, too numb to feel, and almost too sluggish to think.

Her balance destroyed, she toppled to the ground; she landed with a thud on her right side, and stared helplessly at the night sky. She could see Neville, still hovering above her, and looking murderous with rage – but, before he or anyone else could do anything, there was a crunch of footsteps on the frozen ground, and a gloved hand appeared in her line of vision, pointing an Dahurian-larch wand directly at her forehead.

"Don't dream of trying to rescue her, Longbottom," said a voice; as if in a dream, Hermione recognised it as Lucius Malfoy's. "And the same goes for Dobby, and anyone else who might be listening. If I so much as hear Potter's footsteps coming toward me, the Mudblood gets a double dose of particle deceleration right in the cerebrum."

"What difference does that make?" said Neville (though his voice was far from steady). "Hermione would probably prefer death to whatever you're planning on doing to her."

"Perhaps," said Malfoy coolly, "but this spell would not kill her. It would simply slow down the responses in her association cortex until discursive thought became agonising for her. She would face a future as a helpless idiot, with even basic language skills permanently beyond her grasp. And I think I am correct in saying that Hermione Granger would find almost any fate more tolerable than that one."

He waited for the briefest of moments to be sure that no-one had any response to that; then he took Hermione by her outstretched arm and dragged her towards the airship. Even then, he took no chances: he walked crabwise, continuing to face the castle where all the Leaguers were gathered; he continually kept one eye on the sky in case anyone tried to swoop down on him; and he stayed far enough inland to be out of reach of anything in the water.

Or, rather, he thought he did. He didn't know that the giant squid had grown since his days at Hogwarts.

It happened so quickly that even those unfrozen people who were watching had difficulty processing it; Hermione, in her cryogenic torpor, had no hope of making sense of it. All she knew was that, suddenly, Lucius Malfoy was no longer gripping her arm; instead, with an ear-piercing scream, he was being raised into the air by something long, orange, and slippery. For the space of perhaps half a second, he was silhouetted against the sky, a picture of frantic terror as he shot useless cold bolts hither and yon; then he vanished abruptly, to the accompaniment of various sounds of splashing, gurgling, and a rather horrible crunching.

"Dobby!" she heard a voice call from one of the castle windows. "Get Granger to the hospital wing!"

"Dobby is a free elf and the Champion of Shazam, Master Draco!" came the response. "He no longer has to obey orders from…"

"All right, all right. Dobby, will you _please_ take Granger to the hospital wing?"

This seemed to be satisfactory; the next moment, Hermione felt strong, slender hands lifting her up, and she was swept across the grounds as though riding on the wind. The flow of the chill night air across her body hastened the hypothermic shutdown of her senses; by the time she reached the hospital wing, she was sunk in icy oblivion.

* * *

When at length she regained consciousness, she was capable of motion again, but she still felt deathly cold, and it took a minute or so for her shivering to subside enough for her to notice her surroundings. Not that there was much to notice; the room was pitch-black except for a candle burning next to her bed, and the only sounds she could hear were her own teeth chattering, a bald, heavily bandaged figure whimpering in a bed to her left, and the creak of a rocking chair at the foot of her bed.

She tried to raise her head to see who was in the chair, but her head began to swim, and she lay back again with a moan. This, however, seemed to get the rocking figure's attention; there was a particularly long creak and a series of rapid footsteps, and then she felt a hand gently lift her chin. She raised her eyes, and saw a breastplate of golden fish scales glinting in the candlelight.

"About time, Granger," came Draco's languid drawl, sounding even wearier than usual. "Here, drink this. Quickly."

Hermione felt the rim of a goblet pressed against her lips. She opened her mouth, and a wondrous current of warm, vivifying liquid came pouring down her throat. She felt her Amazon strength re-enter her limbs; she sat up in the bed, and began taking deep gulps of air – stale, Skele-Gro-infused hospital-wing air, but none the less glorious for that.

Draco chuckled. "Well, that's put some colour back into your cheeks, hasn't it?" he said. "I suppose Slughorn's not quite the old fraud I thought him – even if he _can't_ spot a future Lord of the Sea when he sees one."

Then, seeing that Hermione was about to rise from the bed, he reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. "No, you don't," he said. "That was just a temporary fix; you'll need a few days yet before you're ready to walk around. Madam Pomfrey's orders."

"But I have to!" Hermione protested. "There's the battle… I've got to…"

"It's over."

Hermione blinked. "Over?" she repeated. "How can it be over?"

Draco shrugged. "When the League's involved, things go quickly, I suppose," he said. "All I know is, I haven't heard a single crash, curse, or Canary Cry for the past few hours. So I conclude that the battle's over – and I also conclude that we won, since another thing I haven't heard is Lord Dogfish-Face saying, '_Cower before me, weaklings, for Hogwarts is mine!'_"

He said these last nine words in a mocking imitation of Voldemort's tenor, making the Dark Lord sound uncannily like a rather stuck-up member of the glee club at Hermione's old school. It was so strangely apropos that she couldn't resist giggling, but the bandaged figure in the other bed seemed to take umbrage at Draco's frivolity. "You laugh now!" he shouted. "But when the Dark Lord rises again, he will take vengeance on you all – and especially on you, Draco Malfoy, you disgrace to a proud line of…"

"Shut it, Dolohov," said Draco, his voice suddenly cold and no-nonsense. "You want to talk of proud lines? I have subjects whose blood goes back to the Cambrian Period."

"Is that Dolohov?" said Hermione, craning her neck to look at the hapless figure. "What happened to him?"

"A Spiderang to the temple," said Draco dryly. "That was Weasley's contribution to our victory, apparently."

Ordinarily, Hermione would have greeted this news with some comment about the Cowled Crusader that mingled exasperation and tender affection. In this context, however, the thought of Ron barely registered with her; the mere mention of people taking out Death Eaters reminded her of why she was in the hospital wing at all, instead of in a dolohovium airship heading for central Wiltshire. "Just as the squid was yours?" she murmured.

"You might say that," said Draco with a small smile.

Hermione shook her head. "Why me, though?" she said. "What did I ever do to him?"

"You helped me cast the spells to protect the island," said Draco. "It wasn't hard for Lucius to guess that; you _are_ my cleverest peer in the League, after all. So he tried to abduct you, hoping that he could force you into taking him there so he could take his revenge on Mother."

Hermione stared at him. "You think so?"

"I'm sure of it," said Draco. "I spent fifteen years in Lucius Malfoy's household, and I know how he thinks. And then, when the Weasley twins were inspecting the airship after the battle, they found this."

He reached under the bed, and pulled out an ancient, rusted length of chain. "From the Manor dungeons," he said. "Lucius knew he couldn't put you under the Imperius Curse unless he shackled you first."

Hermione shuddered, both at Malfoy's plan and at the ruthlessness his stepson had shown in foiling it. "You could have just had the squid subdue him, you know," she said. "You didn't have to tell it to… well, you know."

"He was planning to _kill my mother_, Granger," said Draco fiercely. "I'd be a poor sort of king if I didn't… didn't…"

A yawn that he had been suppressing rose up abruptly and cut him off in mid-sentence, causing Hermione to arch an eyebrow. "Tired, Draco?" she said.

"Aren't I entitled to be?" Draco snapped. "It's two o'clock in the morning, and I've been awake since seven A.M. yesterday – and that was by Albanian time."

Hermione was startled; she'd forgotten how long she'd been unconscious. "I'm sorry, Draco," she said sincerely.

Her practical mind, though, couldn't help adding, "Why didn't you retire ages ago? Someone else could have kept an eye on me, and fed me that potion when I woke up."

Draco suddenly shifted his gaze, as though just noticing something unusual about the bed-posts. "Well, I didn't like to," he murmured. "And most of the others were busy…"

"Dobby could have done it," said Hermione. "He would have been honoured to do something like that for a fellow Leaguer. And he has the stamina of Atlas, and he doesn't need to pour water on himself every hour, and he was in the same time zone all day."

"Well, thanks very much, Granger," Draco snapped. "The next time it happens to be four hours ago, I'll be sure to remind myself of all that. Not all of us have your presence of mind, all right?"

An angry retort quivered on Hermione's lips; she stifled it with an effort, but there was still a touch of ice in her voice as she said, "Draco, I think you had better get to bed. I'm grateful for all you've done, but I don't think I'll be needing anything more from you tonight."

Draco gave her a long look that she couldn't quite read, and then sighed and murmured, "No, I suppose not."

He turned and walked away, his footsteps sounding heavily against the floor tiles. It might have just been weariness that was making him drag his feet; somehow, though, Hermione didn't think so, and she was just debating with herself whether she ought to say something to lighten the mood – "Sweet dreams", perhaps – when, with a strangled yelp, Draco suddenly lost his footing and fell face-first onto the floor.

At the same moment, Hermione felt a violent yank at her waist. This gave her a fairly shrewd idea as to what had just happened; sure enough, when she sat up and craned her neck, she saw that the end of her lasso had been dangling down by the foot of the bed, just in the right position to snare an unwary sea-king.

She laughed involuntarily at the look on Draco's face; then, remembering her manners, she said, "Are you all right?"

"No," said Draco immediately.

His frankness momentarily startled Hermione; then she realised that, since he was bound (at least around the ankle) by her lasso, he didn't have much choice but to be frank. "I'm sorry," she said. "What did you hurt?"

"Just now, you mean?" said Draco. "Not much. I managed to put a hand out before I hit the ground; my wrist will probably be fairly sore when I next wake up, but that's about it."

"I thought you said you weren't all right," said Hermione.

"I did," said Draco.

"Stop fooling around, Draco," said Hermione impatiently. "You can't be all right and not all right at the same time."

"Never said I was," said Draco. "I said I wasn't hurt."

Hermione paused; her mind still wasn't up to full speed, and, while she grasped the distinction Draco was making, she couldn't quite work out the implications. "You mean…?" she said.

"Do I have to spell it out for you, Hermione?" said Draco. "Physically, I'm fine – well, not _fine_. I won't be that until about twelve hours from now, when I'll have restored the sleep I lost on your account. But I'm better off than most of the rest of the League is, and certainly better than you are. But that's small comfort when you've just realised how mad you are about a girl you can never take back to Atlantis with you when you come of age in June, and whom, in any case, you've been such a git to these past six years that she wouldn't have you even if she could."

Hermione's eyes widened. "Oh, I see," she said. "I'm sorry, Draco. I had no idea."

Draco sighed. "Well, neither did I, until yesterday," he said. "Chang was nattering about how much she missed Diggory at this time of year; some phrase she used just clicked inside me, and, the next thing I knew, the morays of Desire had gotten hold of me and were tearing me to pieces." He shut his eyes and pursed his lips, as though the feeling had only gotten stronger since then. "People talk all this mush, you know, about how glorious it is to be consumed by irresistible passion, but I'm guessing those are people who didn't spend three-quarters of their lives smothering everything about themselves that others might have recognised as decent and human. For the rest of us, it's a judgment, plain and simple."

Hermione nodded sympathetically. "So who is she?" she asked.

"Pardon?" said Draco.

"The girl you fancy," said Hermione. "Who is she?"

Then, misreading the expression on Draco's face, she said hastily, "No, all right, that was unfair. I take it back; if you'd rather not answer, you don't…"

She trailed off, realising that Draco was laughing – laughing uproariously, like the frog that had once swallowed his kingdom. "And Potter said you were the perceptive one!" he gasped. "Oh, that's priceless. Priceless, I tell you!"

An absurd, impossible suspicion stole into Hermione's mind. "Draco," she said, leaning forward, "are you trying to say…"

"I'm finished with trying to say things," said Draco. "I'm going to show you."

And he leapt up from the floor and onto Hermione's cot, pressed her body to his, and kissed her with the fierceness of a hungry orca.

* * *

Hermione's body offered him no resistance. This was unusual, since Hermione's mind generally kept a firm command over Hermione's body; however appealing something might be, if she believed it to be wrong, she wouldn't let it feel right. And one might have expected that the notion of letting Draco Malfoy kiss her was one about which her mind would have strong views.

And so it did – but it seemed, rather to Hermione's own surprise, to have strong views on both sides of the question. One part of it reminded her that Draco had been at the centre of a plot to lead the Death Eaters into Hogwarts through a Vanishing Cabinet; another part reminded her that Draco had publicly disowned his role in that plot, and, with Luna's assistance, had relocated the Cabinet itself to the bottom of the North Sea. An akh-Hermione noted that he had killed a man in cold blood not twelve hours before; a ba-Hermione noted with equal force that he had probably saved her own life in the process. The prosecution begged to observe that, in any case, he was still a believer in blood purity, and by his own rules ought not to even be touching a Muggle-born such as her; the defence acidly enquired in what sense the daughter of Hippolyta could be considered a Muggle-born. Amidst all this intellectual turmoil, her body found itself on its own, with no guiding principle but its own senses and emotions – and it could hardly be denied that Draco was making an excellent sensory and emotional case for himself. The salt tang of the sea on his lips, the soft firmness of his hands against her bare shoulders, the sense of desperate longing that she could feel emanating from his every muscle – Hermione would have been something less than a woman if none of this had set her heart in motion.

She wondered vaguely whether he had veela blood. Probably; there were, she imagined, very few water-spirit clans that hadn't married into the Atlantean royal house at some point.

The kiss lasted about a minute, all told – not quite the Hogwarts record, but still respectable. When it was over, Hermione sat back, took several deep breaths, and whispered, "Oh."

Draco nodded. "You see the problem," he said.

"I suppose so," said Hermione. In truth, she saw a great many problems; the world had been much simpler two minutes before. "But it may be soluble, you know."

"Soluble in water?" said Draco with a faint smirk. "You're a kind person, Hermione, and thank you, but if I'm going to be a king, I'll need to start thinking realistically. You can't live in the sea, and I can't erase my past."

"It's the present that counts, though," Hermione murmured.

Draco stared at her. "What?"

Hermione sighed, and shook her head. "I don't know," she said. "We're both tired; we should wait till daybreak to try and think about this. Here, let me untie your ankle, so you can go down to your dormitory and get some sleep."

She took Draco's foot in her lap and removed it from her lasso with a tenderness that sent shivers up both their spines; then Draco, with some reluctance, rose from the cot and began to trudge wearily to the door once again.

"Sweet dreams," Hermione called after him.

Draco paused, and turned back. It was hard to tell in the darkness, but Hermione thought she saw a smile on his face. "The same to you, Gra– Hermione," he said, and was gone.

* * *

Hermione lay back on her pillow, and tried to come to grips with everything that had just happened. Draco Malfoy had saved her life; he was in love with her; she wasn't at all sure that she wasn't in love with him, or in something that could become love if she let it.

Did she want to let it, though? The love of a king wasn't something one could accept casually; it brought with it an intimate share in all his duties to his people. She would have to turn her back on her parents, her studies, everything she'd ever known, and quite literally dive into a brand-new, high-profile life in an utterly alien culture. It was a frightening thought – though, when she reflected on all the ancient and forgotten lore that was said to be hidden in Atlantis's 10,000-year-old libraries, she thought that perhaps she could overcome that fear.

But then, of course, there was the small matter of living underwater. There were Bubble-Head Charms, of course, but those were only good for short swims; there was gillyweed, but that didn't come cheap – and, anyway, she could just imagine what the Atlanteans would think of a queen with a perpetual chaw in her mouth. The only other recourse that she could think of was her fellow League members; perhaps one of them had a power that might solve her dilemma.

_Which one, though?_ she thought, yawning as she felt sleep coming to claim her. _Which Leaguer could make a human being able to survive indefinitely underwater?_

_And how many Leaguers are there now, anyway?_


	24. Comings and Goings

Some three hours before, Harry Potter had wanted to know the same thing. "Luna! Emerald!" he called, zooming into the third-floor corridor where the two girls were carefully burning what remained of Rodolphus Lestrange's body.

Emerald glanced up at him, and arched an eyebrow. "Well, there you are," she said. "It's about time; I haven't seen you since Ka– Neville and I arrived. Whatever happened to that 'saving-people-thing' that Hermione said you had?"

"It's not my fault," said Harry defensively. "I was heading straight for Lestrange there; then Bellatrix whispered something to him, he pointed his finger at me, and, the next thing I knew, I was trapped in a magical bubble somewhere off the coast of Antarctica."

Emerald's eyes widened, and their scornful indigo hue changed to a more sympathetic cerulean. "Oh," she said. "Well, that's a nuisance. How did you get out?"

"I didn't," said Harry. "It disappeared on its own, just a few minutes ago – Mors Jaculatoris, I suppose." He shook his head. "What I'd like to know is where Lestrange got that kind of magic. I don't think even Voldemort could have pulled out something that good on the spur of the moment; what could have made one of his minor followers so powerful?"

"Eating wands, probably," said Luna matter-of-factly.

Harry blinked. "Eating… wands?"

"Well, Mr Lestrange's regenerated body was mostly wood, you know," said Luna, poking the ash, as she spoke, with a beam of energy from her ring. "So it's quite possible that he could incorporate other kinds of wood into his body, and absorb their powers. Imagine having the power of a dozen wands at once, all inside you."

For the first time since he had acquired his powers, Harry felt dizzy. "You think that's what it was?" he said.

"It must be," said Luna, with that untroubled confidence that was her trademark. "When we clean this up later, we'll probably find traces of cores, and that will… oh, see, right there." She twitched the beam slightly, and a small pile of ash fell away to reveal a long, gleaming unicorn hair, twisting in the heat of the fire.

Harry swallowed. "Well, I guess that proves it, all right," he said.

He wondered what the final battle with Lestrange had been like, and how Luna had finally managed to subdue him. But he suppressed that thought; there would be other chances to ask her, and other things were more important right now. "So was he the last to be taken down?" he said.

"Well, the last Death Eater," said Luna. "Voldemort himself disappeared about the same time you did; no-one seems to have seen him since, and we haven't had time to check the map." (The Marauder's Map had been placed in Dumbledore's office during the afternoon's preparations, along with several other things that the members had thought might come in useful, such as Harry's Invisibility Cloak and his bottle of Felix Felicis.)

Harry nodded; somehow, Voldemort's flight didn't really surprise him. "What about our side?" he said. "Did we lose anyone?"

Luna glanced enquiringly at Emerald, whose face darkened. "Cho," she said softly. "We lost her. I saw it. Bellatrix hit her with a one-two punch: Silencing Charm, then Avada Kedavra."

Luna frowned. "Well, that's very sad," she said. "But at least she can be with Cedric again. She always missed him, I think."

Harry winced for a nanosecond, but then regained his composure. "Still, it's a blow," he said. "With Snape nowhere to be found, that means we're out two of our most powerful members."

"Three," said a familiar voice from the wall behind him. Harry and the girls turned, and were momentarily speechless at what they saw: Albus Dumbledore, in full regalia, was standing in the middle of an 18th-Century pastoral landscape, with painted shepherdesses tending their flocks in the background.

"Professor!" Harry cried. "What… how…" Then he realised, and his face darkened. "Who was it, sir?" he whispered. "Whoever it was, he'll pay. I swear he'll pay."

Dumbledore smiled gently. "I thank you for your loyalty, Harry," he said, "but so extreme a demonstration won't be necessary. No-one has killed me. Yet," he added, as an afterthought.

Harry blinked. "What happened, then?" he said.

"A vivid object lesson about the dangers of hubris," Dumbledore replied. "After subduing Fenrir Greyback so quickly, I ought to have been satisfied; instead, I endeavoured to rob Mr Weasley of his proper glory by also disposing of Antonin Dolohov. Who very properly taught me humility by pulling some red Kryptonite out from under his robes and forcing me into my own future portrait."

"We're quite excited about it," one of the shepherdesses commented. "We've never had a _live_ Headmaster up here before."

"So how do we free you?" said Harry.

"Oh, it should wear off on its own in twenty-four hours," said Dumbledore. "But in the meantime I'm afraid I can't be much use to you."

"Did you get Greyback to tell you where the secret gorilla city is located, Professor?" said Luna. "Dad would be thrilled to…"

Emerald cleared her throat. "Excuse me," she said, "but I think we're losing sight of the important thing."

Dumbledore glanced at her enquiringly. "And what would that be, Miss Potter?" he said.

"We still have at least one Horcrux left that needs destroying," said Emerald. "Possibly two, depending on whether Professor Snape succeeded…"

"He did," said Harry. "I saw it earlier today. It was horrible, but rather magnificent at the same time." He lowered his head, abashed. "I never realised how much courage he had," he murmured.

"I think there's a lot about Professor Snape that you never realised," Emerald commented. "But, however bravely he took out his Horcrux, that still leaves us with one more to destroy before we can attack the big man himself. And the sword is useless, half the basilisk fangs are in nonbeing or everything, and the other half –" she pointed to the bag hanging from Dumbledore's painted waist "– are now just marks on canvas until around eleven o'clock tomorrow. So what are we going to destroy the last Horcrux with?" She glanced at Harry. "I don't suppose you happened to pick up some _Ugimbi ya Kuharibu_ while you were zooming up past the Gold Coast just now?"

Luna bit her lip, seeming genuinely alarmed for the first time since Harry had known her. "Yes, that's a problem," she murmured.

"Yes, it is," said Dumbledore gravely. "Nor is it the only problem. Harry, there is something I need to tell you that perhaps I should have told you when…"

At that moment, a sudden, searing pain shot through Harry's scar, and he heard a high-pitched voice say with his mouth, _"We meet again, my dear. My, how you've grown…"_

_"Eat fewmets, Riddle!" shouted the red-haired girl dangling in front of him._

_"Now, now," said Harry. "Is that any way to talk to an old friend? Perhaps you need a reminder of all the good times we had together." He raised his left ring finger. "_Serpensortia!_"_

_A black mamba burst out from the finger of his suit and landed on the nape of the girl's neck. She let out a short, involuntary yelp, but stifled it almost immediately, and, despite the terror and revulsion that were manifest in every inch of her body, she made no sound as the reptile slowly slithered up her spine._

_Harry laughed softly. "You're very brave, my dear," he said. "Far too brave for my liking, in fact. But I suppose that comes with being a – what did your friends call you? – a Ruby Archer."_

_The girl's lips remained resolutely shut, but the glance she shot him was one of pure contempt._

_"Yes, we shall have to do something about that," Harry mused. "But how to put proper humility into a modern-day Robin Hood… why, of course. The simplest thing in the world."_

_He raised his thumb, pointed it directly at her wide, brown eyes, and cried, "_Maledictus Dothanum!_" …_

* * *

… "Harry?" came Emerald's voice. "Harry, are you all right?"

Slowly, the third-floor corridor reformed itself around the Scarlet Speedster, and his own identity reasserted itself. "He's got Ginny," he whispered.

"Who?" said Luna.

"Voldemort," said Harry, trying frantically to recall the scene. "He's in… yes, the Astronomy Tower; he's got spells coming out of his fingers, and… Professor, have you ever heard of something called 'Maledictus Dothanum'?"

Dumbledore pursed his lips with distaste. "The Cloud of Unseeing," he said. "One of the oldest and most potent spells of blindness ever invented."

A surge of rage bubbled up inside Harry's chest. "I've got to go," he said.

"Harry, wait!" Emerald cried. "Think for a moment! Why would Voldemort…"

But Harry was already gone.

* * *

Emerald stamped her foot, and groaned. "He's going to get himself killed," she said.

"Quite possibly," said Dumbledore.

There was a note in his tone that sounded almost glad, and Emerald shot him a sharp glance. The Headmaster's painted face, however, was unreadable.

She sighed, and ran a hand through her hair. "And even if he doesn't," she said, "he still can't kill Voldemort, because of that last Horcrux. Did you ever even figure out what that was, Professor?"

Dumbledore shook his head sadly. "Alas, no," he said. "Nor where it is – though it is likely enough to still be in Albania, which will make it rather difficult for us to…"

"Albania?" said Luna, so suddenly that Emerald jumped. "Is that where you went?"

Dumbledore turned, and gazed at her in surprise. "Certainly," he said. "Lord Voldemort has spent much of his adult life in Albania; it seemed natural enough to suppose that he may have deposited a Horcrux there."

And at this apparently innocuous statement, Luna's face turned as white as a sheet. The Green Lantern of Earth, who had shown no trace of fear while fighting an undead Death Eater with the power of a dozen wizards, now paled with mortal dread at the information that Dumbledore had been looking for a Horcrux in Albania.

"Luna?" said Emerald uncertainly, taking a step toward her. "What's wrong?"

Luna closed her eyes, and stood for a few minutes in silence, her face taut with some inner turmoil. When at last she opened her eyes again, some measure of colour had returned to her cheeks, but it was still a pale and tremulous Luna Lovegood that came forward and embraced Emerald tightly. "Give Harry and the others my love," she whispered. "Will you do that? Tell them that there was no other way."

"No other way than what?" said Emerald, her own face starting to pale with alarm.

Luna shook her head, and stepped back and raised her ring. For a moment, the green aura that appeared around her seemed faint and uncertain, but after a few seconds it brightened to its accustomed brilliance, and Luna rose into the air and flew down the corridor, in the opposite direction from where Harry had gone.

Emerald glanced at the pastoral landscape on the wall. "What do you think, Professor?" she said. "Could that possibly have meant anything good?"

Dumbledore smiled gently. "It is always good to tell people of your love for them, Miss Potter," he said. "I frequently wish that I had done it more often."

Emerald rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean."

"Yes," said Dumbledore. "But I think you already know the answer to that question – and it is, in any case, more important that you fulfill the task that Miss Lovegood has set you. Go. Give her love to the rest of the League." His eyes twinkled suddenly. "You may wish to begin, perhaps, with Mr Longbottom – who is, unless my ears deceive me, in the Great Hall at this very minute."

Emerald flushed. "Hal was right," she murmured. "You are a dirty old man."

But she took his advice, all the same.


	25. The Next Big Adventure

Harry blazed through the corridors of the castle, his fierce determination increasing with every step. _You're not getting her, Tom, _he thought. _You got my parents. You got Sirius. You're not getting her._

The thought of Sirius almost made him pause. He remembered the last time he had rushed out to save someone because of a vision he'd received through his scar; was Voldemort just trying for an encore of the same trick? Was Ginny, in fact, safe and sound in a completely different part of the castle, and the sight of her trussed and tormented sheer illusion?

No, it wasn't. He was sure of that. He remembered his false vision of Sirius, the previous year; there had been nothing there that Voldemort was incapable of inventing. But, this time, he had looked straight into Ginny's eyes, and had seen in them the courage that he knew so well – the courage built on trust in love and the certainty that goodness would conquer. Voldemort couldn't have duplicated that in a million years; even if he had tried, there would have been a note of mocking falsity about it that would have given the secret away. No, what he had just seen was definitely reality.

Besides, what would have been the point of a ruse? There was no prophecy in the Astronomy Tower that only he could handle; in fact, there wasn't much of anything in the part of the Astronomy Tower where Voldemort and Ginny were. It was a deserted, rather cobwebby nook just off the main stairway; he'd gone past it a hundred times on his way to class, and it had never merited a second thought. That was presumably why Voldemort had selected it: being an utterly insignificant and out-of-the-way spot – yet one that Harry was sure to recognise – it was perfect for a final showdown between Dark Lord and Chosen One, with no other Leaguers or Death Eaters interfering.

And that was the real reason why Harry was heading for the Astronomy Tower. He had no illusions that Voldemort had accidentally let his Occlumency slip for a moment; he was as sure as Emerald was that Voldemort had wanted him to see what he had seen. But it wasn't a trap; it was a challenge. _You or me this time_: that was what Voldemort was saying. And Harry was only too happy to take him up on it.

And now he had almost reached the place. He put on an extra burst of speed, and rounded the corner –

And then he stopped.

Not out of fear, or surprise. The scene that met his eyes was exactly what he had known it would be: Voldemort was standing beneath the window, awaiting Harry with a quiet smirk on his inhuman face; Ginny was hanging suspended in midair near the centre of the room, the arrows from her quiver lying scattered on the floor, her hair brushing against them as her body slowly rotated about an invisible axis. Nor was it because of any sudden reluctance to take on his adversary: on the contrary, the sight of Ginny's helpless indignity had only reinforced his desire to clean the floor with Thomas M. Riddle.

No, he had stopped, quite simply, because he had been unable to go on. The instant his foot had crossed the threshold into Voldemort's chosen meeting-place, every muscle in his body had suddenly felt as though it were straining against almost-hardened concrete; however hard he tried, his body resolutely refused to move any faster towards Voldemort than the Eurasian Plate was, at that moment, moving southeast.

Voldemort waved his left pinkie finger, and summoned a gold watch out of midair. "Forty seconds," he said, arching an eyebrow. "Slower than I expected, Harry. Is the Speed Force losing its vigour, or did you stop to exchange pleasantries with the Grey Lady?"

"Harry!" said Ginny, her Clouded eyes alight with sudden hope. "I knew you'd come. Use my Static-Pulse Arrow – the one with the solenoid in the head. If you vibrate it the right way when you throw it, it should cancel out the wand cores in his fingers."

_I would if I could, Ginny,_ Harry would have said, had his tongue been any more mobile than the rest of him. But it wasn't, and so the only response that Ginny got to her poignantly useless advice was Voldemort's mocking laugh. "I'm afraid, my dear Ginevra," he said, "that your would-be saviour is in no position to cancel out anything. But thank you for the warning." And he Vanished the Static-Pulse Arrow with a lazy wave of his thumb.

"Perhaps, Harry," he added, reaching down and picking up an object from the floor, "you failed to notice this when you came in just now." He held up the object for Harry to see: a lacquer tetrahedron with the symbols **嬈 倀 **painted in red on each face. "Jao Ch'ang – an ancient Chinese poltergeist-trapping spell. The faster you enter, the slower you leave – assuming that you leave at all, which I think is unlikely in your case."

Harry's heart sank. Of course, he should have expected something like this; what had possessed him to think that Voldemort would ever fight fair? He'd been a fool – and now his folly was about to lose the wizarding world its greatest symbol of hope. What a way to repay his mother's sacrifice…

"Oh, I see," said Ginny, sounding uncannily like her own mother. "So you don't dare fight Harry unless he can barely move. Why were we ever afraid of a filthy coward like you, anyway?"

"Do you hear an insect buzzing, Harry?" said Voldemort coolly. "I believe that your friend hopes to provoke me into forgetting about you – perhaps even into inadvertently breaking this charm. How little she understands. Fifteen years, Harry – fifteen years and more, and not a day of it gone by without my dreaming of this moment. I lost my first chance, two years ago, because I was foolish enough to give you a chance to defend yourself; I have rectified that error now. All that remains are two little words – two words that no ill-mannered young blood traitor (who will, rest assured, be punished afterward) could possibly distract me from speaking."

As if in a dream, Harry saw Voldemort raise his right index finger until it was aimed directly at his scar; as if in a dream, he heard him cry, with a howl of triumph, "_Avada Kedavra!_"

And the body of Harry Potter – Boy Who Lived, Scarlet Speedster, Chosen One, Fastest Wizard Alive – fell with a thud to the floor, as lifeless as anything could ever be.


	26. The Rediscovered Country

"Oh, here we go, I think he's coming around," said a strangely familiar voice. "Hey, there, Harry, finally decided to rejoin the land of the living?"

This seemed such a stupid thing to say to someone who had just been murdered that Harry opened his eyes to give the idiot a piece of his mind. The words died on his lips, however, as the light flooded in upon him, and he saw his own face looming anxiously over him.

He blinked, and looked again. Yes, that was definitely he; the likeness was perfect in every detail – except, oddly enough, that it had no scar. And, then, he couldn't quite tell about the hair; what he could see of it seemed as black and unruly as his own, but most of it was concealed by some sort of helmet or… wait a moment…

"Hal?" he murmured slowly.

The face smiled with satisfaction, and turned to some unseen figure over its left shoulder. "He's awake, Remus."

"So I can hear," said another, deeper voice. There was a footfall as of boots against stone, and Remus Lupin entered Harry's field of vision – but this wasn't the care-worn werewolf who had taught Harry Defence against the Dark Arts in his third year. This Remus Lupin glowed with health and vigour; his gleaming blue and yellow robes covered a muscular, well-nourished body, and his face, as he smiled down at Harry, was free of the creases and sunken eyes that want had given to its analogue.

"Well, Harry," he said, placing the Helm of Nabu on the edge of Harry's mattress and leaning forward upon it, "you certainly do have a taste for dramatic entrances, don't you? Here we are, peacefully attempting to get the dementor stink out of the Great Hall, and then you come along appearing out of nowhere and falling to the floor in a heap."

"The Great Hall?" said Harry, bewildered. "But I was in the Astronomy Tower when Voldemort killed me."

"When _who_ did _what_?" said Hal sharply.

"Hal, darling, give him a few minutes," came his mother's voice. "He's clearly had a very rough day."

Harry raised his head, and discovered that the hospital wing (which was, evidently, where he was) was much more crowded than he had at first realised. Besides Hal and Remus, there was Lily Potter sitting on the next bed to his right, eyeing him with attentive concern; James in a chair a little further on, his thumb marking a page in the _International Quidditch Review_; and Sirius standing by the door, with his wife, the former Marlene McKinnon, by his side. (She, like the others, was in full Justice-Society regalia, and, for a brief, heart-stopping moment, Harry thought that Bellatrix Lestrange had dyed her costume black and somehow followed him across universes.)

It was probably just as well that they were all there; if he hadn't been surrounded by so many heroes of the First (or, in this world, the Only) Voldemort War, Harry might well have started throwing things out of sheer, bewildered frustration. He was supposed to be dead; he was quite sure of that. He had heard Voldemort say the words, he had seen the spell heading toward him, and there had been no maternal sacrifice to protect him – so, by all rights, he ought to have now arrived at the ultimate destination of the human soul, just as Hagrid, Snape, and Cho had presumably done before him. What that ultimate destination was, he didn't claim to know – whether it was the blackness of oblivion, the judgment seat of the Almighty, or even something as bland and equivocal as an otherworldly train depot – but he was fairly certain that the hospital wing of the Earth-Two Hogwarts wasn't it.

But he knew that, if he started throwing medical implements in a blind fury, Sirius would just catch them in midair and give him a lecture about anti-social behaviour. (The contrast with the Earth-1 Sirius was remarkable; this Sirius, with his – so to speak – dogged insistence on the value of responsibility and fair play, sometimes reminded Harry of a lustier version of Percy Weasley. But maybe that was natural when you'd seen the consequences of irresponsibility the way he had.)

So, instead, he took a deep breath, counted to ten thousand, and said, "Maybe I should start from the beginning."

"An excellent idea," said Lupin. "And, to my mind, the beginning is where you tell us what happened to you and Emerald three weeks ago. We got a garbled account out of Aubrey – something about the two of you flickering into nothingness just as he was about to Kiss you – but nothing that could leave us really confident of my goddaughter's current well-being, or even her current being at all."

Harry winced. "Sorry about that," he said. "I would have come back and explained, but we've been pretty busy these last few weeks."

"Join the club," said Hal. "Why do you think I didn't cross over and check on her myself?"

"Point," Harry acknowledged. "Anyway, what happened…"

* * *

One thing led to another, and soon the thunderstruck Justice Society had heard nearly the whole story of the Earth-1 Voldemort's resurrection, the hunt for the Horcruxes, the attack on Hogwarts, and Harry's ill-fated confrontation with Voldemort in the Astronomy Tower.

"So he shot a Killing Curse at me," Harry concluded, "and, the next thing I knew, I was here. And I'd really appreciate it if someone could tell me why."

All eyes turned to the red-hooded figure in the doorway. "Well, Padfoot?" said James. "You're the genius-level intellect here. Any theories?"

Sirius chewed his lower lip thoughtfully. "Something resembling one, maybe," he said. "Harry, you say that you haven't done any inter-dimensional travel since the Aubrey incident?"

Harry shook his head.

"So your last non-Prime location was our Great Hall," said Sirius. "Yes, that fits."

"Fits with what?" said Hal.

"With the known rules of sub-quantum consciousness transfer," said Sirius. "You see, if you've lived in more than one universe during the course of your life, that means that you have, in a sense, more than one body, because each universe that you visit essentially recreates your body according to its particular vibratory structure. Of course, at any given moment, only one of your bodies is actually in existence, but the potentiality for the others still exists, as does the sub-quantum linkage between them and the one you're using."

"Oh, well, of course," said Harry dryly. "That clears everything up."

Sirius blinked. "Well, doesn't it?"

"Let me try, darling," said Marlene. "Harry, when you died in your world, your body in that world lost its hold on your soul. Under normal circumstances, your soul would then have left the physical realm entirely – but your circumstances weren't normal."

_They never are,_ Harry thought.

"You see, your soul had occupied this other body, the one you'd left in the Great Hall in this world," said Marlene. "That body hadn't been killed, and your soul still remembered how to get back to it. So when you died there, of course you appeared here." She turned to Sirius. "Correct?"

"Letter-perfect, macushla," said Sirius, and planted a kiss on her cheek.

"Well, how do I get back, then?" said Harry. "Can I just vibrate myself back into Earth-One, or is there something else I need to do first?"

The Blacks exchanged grave looks. "Harry, I don't think you can get back," said Sirius. "That would involve creating a second copy of your original body – in essence, forcing your universe to contain two distinct yet identical objects. The philosophical problems involved in that…" He shook his head.

Slowly, the full truth dawned on Harry. "You mean I'm stuck here?" he exclaimed.

"No, you're not stuck _here_," said Sirius. "You can still travel to any universe where you haven't died. You just can't return to your own."

"But I have to!" Harry shouted. "There's a war going on in my universe! People I care about are getting killed and tortured and trapped in paintings! I can't just sit here and let it happen!"

Nobody seemed to have any answer to that. Indeed, as Harry looked around the room, most of the faces he met seemed to be filled with admiration and pride. ("How did we manage to raise him so well if we weren't even alive?" he heard James whisper to Lily.)

"Well," said Sirius slowly, "if that's the way you feel about it, I suppose it's possible that we could do something. After all, we have known people who've returned from the dead: Mad-Eye, for instance…"

"I don't think Harry wants to go back to his world as a restless spirit of vengeance, Sirius," said Lily.

"No, of course not," said Sirius impatiently. "I was just giving that as an example. The point is, we know where his body is, and we have his soul right here; the only difficulty in reuniting them is… well…"

"That his body's dead," said Hal.

"Exactly. And the JSH has overcome greater obstacles than that before." Sirius turned and glanced speculatively at Lupin. "How about you, Moony? Could that Babylonian wizardry of yours revivify Harry's body?"

Lupin considered, then shook his head. "No, the Killing Curse on it is accomplished magic," he said. "The best I could do would be to place a spell of animation on it – enough to allow him to move, talk, and access the Speed Force, but nothing more."

"Well, that's pretty good, isn't it?" said Harry. "If I could do all that, then I could help the others just as well as if I were alive. Better, really, since I couldn't be killed."

An expression of disgust flitted across Lupin's face. "Yes, I suppose so," he said. "If you wished to become one of the walking dead, then you could indeed do so. But is supporting your friends really that important to you?"

Harry hadn't thought of it that way. It took him some time to respond. "Well… no, I suppose not," he said. "At least… no. I don't want to become like Voldemort, doing any obscene thing just to spend a few more minutes alive."

"Good," said Lupin. "Because, in any case…"

"Wait a moment, though," said Harry urgently. "I never said that I wanted to go back permanently. I'm not trying to cheat death. What if you just sent me back for an hour or something – just long enough to say some good-byes, and maybe find out how the battle ends? That wouldn't be too indecent and unnatural, would it?"

Marlene chuckled. "An Hour of Power, as it were," she said. "What do you say, Remus? Isn't there a precedent for that in the Society?"

"I'm not sure that I want Harry following in Alice's footsteps, Marlene," said Lupin austerely. "But the question is really academic, because, as I was about to say, I couldn't cast the spell from here in any event. I would have to travel to Harry's universe and be physically present to the body in order to re-animate it. And, after seeing what Harry's gotten himself into, I have no intention of doing that. Dying once is enough for me; I have no wish, once I've finished my life here, to reappear in another world's Astronomy Tower and do it all over again."

The other Society members nodded in agreement, and Harry's heart sank. He knew that Lupin was perfectly in the right, but nonetheless he almost hated him for not being willing to make the sacrifice. Didn't anybody understand that this wasn't a matter of personal vainglory? He _needed_ to be there for the end of the battle. He was the Chosen One, the Light's ultimate symbol of hope. If Voldemort could announce his death, it would utterly demoralise all the rest of the League – particularly considering how many other Leaguers Voldemort's forces had already defeated that night: Dean, Cho, Dumbledore, Ginny… oh, sweet powers above, if he only knew what was happening to Ginny…

"That wouldn't apply to Yz, of course," said James thoughtfully.

Lupin turned to him, and arched an eyebrow. "Yz?"

"Sure," said James. "Yz is functionally immortal, and doesn't really have a body anyway, so the side-effects of inter-dimensional travel wouldn't affect him. So there is a way for Harry to go back, if he's interested."

Harry sat bolt upright. "You mean that?" he said.

"Certainly," said James. "Only for an hour, though. You've said that, and I'm holding you to it. It probably wouldn't work much longer anyway, what with rigor mortis and all."

Hal looked dubious. "I don't know about this, Harry," he said. "Do you really want to trust yourself to that crazy thunderbolt of Dad's? The number of disasters he got Emerald and me into over the years…"

"That's because your father suffers from chronic thoughtlessness, Hal," said Lily. "He's probably the last person on Earth the Bahdnesians should have entrusted with that kind of power. But, since he won't be summoning Yz accidentally this time, I don't see that Harry's in any danger.

"But, Harry, dear," she added, turning and fixing him with her gaze, "do try and think about this from all angles before you make your decision. People who return to a place for one last look… well, they don't always take away the memories they'd hoped."

Harry frowned. "Is that supposed to be some sort of mysterious warning?" he said. "I thought Dearborn was the one who…"

Lily laughed, and reached forward to stroke his cheek. "No, not a warning," she said. "Only an anxious thought from a woman who doesn't want to see her as-good-as-son hurt worse than he already is. Take it or leave it."

Harry nodded, his mind very much elsewhere. "Okay, fine," he said. "Thanks, Mum."

Lily sighed.

"Well, Harry," said James, rising from his chair and tossing his magazine aside, "if you're as certain as all that, there's no sense in dithering. Why don't you lead me to the spot in the Astronomy Tower where Voldemort got you, so that Yz knows where to look for this body of yours?"

Harry smiled. "Love to."


	27. Starting Back at (Earth-)One

"Ah, yes," said James nostalgically, glancing around the disused Astronomy-Tower nook. "Yes, I remember this spot well. We Marauders used to come here all the time to plan our schemes. There's a spell of disinterest on it, you know; unless you know in advance that you ought to notice it, you're not going to notice it, no matter what's going on in it."

"Really?" said Harry vaguely, his mind otherwise occupied. Through his connection to the Speed Force, he could actually feel the planet rotating beneath his feet, and he very much wanted to get back to Earth-One before it rotated much more.

James nodded. "We discovered it in our second year," he said. "I suppose your Voldemort knows about it, too; it's unlikely he would have picked so suitable a place for his purposes by accident." He chuckled. "I'll say this for your world's Riddle: he seems to have a healthy interest in the secrets of Hogwarts. Not like our version, who never seemed to be interested in anything but his precious Anti-Life Equation."

"Great, great," said Harry, who wasn't really in the mood to hear anyone praise his world's Voldemort. "So can you summon Yz now?"

James arched an eyebrow. "Why, yes, I believe I could, at that," he said. "Is it important to you for some reason that I do?"

"_Dad!_"

James laughed. "All right, all right," he said, and raised his head and called, "_Say, you!_"

For a moment, nothing happened; then there was a flash of light, and a shape like an electrified genie appeared in the air above them. It gave off so much light that it was difficult to see clearly; by vibrating his eyes just right, though, Harry could just make out the long, pointed nose and roguish smirk on its crackling face.

"Yz, we've got a situation," said James. "Harry here left his body in his home universe with a Killing Curse on it. We need you to put a spell of animation on it so that he can use it for one more hour. Report back here when you're done. Oh, and there's a Jao-Ch'ang that needs smashing, too," he added as an afterthought.

"You got it, Boss," said Yz, and vanished on the instant.

James and Harry waited for about 15 seconds (or, in impatient-speedster terms, enough time to run to New Zealand and back 132.2878 times) before Yz reappeared, and gave a mock salute. "Mission accomplished, Boss," he said. "The body's good for one hour, starting right now. No more, no less."

James nodded, and, turning to his right, opened his mouth to say, "Take care of yourself, now, Harry, you hear?" But it was too late; as soon as the words "right now" had left Yz's mouth, Harry had vanished in a puff of residual tachyons.

James rolled his eyes. "That's my boy," he said.

"Like father, like extra-spatial analogue of son," Yz agreed.

"I suppose," said James. "And you did keep him waiting rather longer than he liked. You're getting slow in your old age, Yz; I wouldn't have expected it to take you a full quarter-minute just to temporarily rekindle a dead body."

"Well, it wouldn't have if the body had been really dead," said Yz. "You didn't tell me that I'd have to sever the blood protection in that other Riddle's body before I started working."

James blinked. "Blood protection?" he said. "What blood protection?"

Yz hesitated, and seemed to flicker nervously at the edges. "You mean… you didn't know?"

The next few minutes – and the half-hour that followed, as James and Yz attempted to explain to the rest of the Society that, yes, Voldemort had tried to kill Harry Potter, but it had taken old well-meaning Prongs to actually do it – were a sticky, painful affair, and not one that any empathetic soul would care to explore in detail. Let us, therefore, turn our attention to more cheerful matters.

* * *

The first thing Harry noticed, as he wrenched his eyes open and glanced around the Tower nook, was that all his senses, and particularly that of touch, seemed somehow muted – not that they were any less keen, but that they weren't informing his mind with the same urgency as before. That was, he supposed, a consequence of being dead: merely physical things ceased to seem as important as they once had.

The second thing he noticed, however, had a significance that was much more than physical, and Harry knew in an instant that it was as important to him as ever. It was Ginny; she was lying on the floor about three yards from him, and her face was screwed up as though she was in mortal agony.

In less than a picosecond, Harry was kneeling beside her, his hand on her shoulder. "Ginny?" he whispered. "Ginny, what's happened?"

The pain in Ginny's face momentarily faded, replaced by a mixture of joy, doubt, and utter bewilderment. "Harry?" she said, and raised a hand to feel his face. (Harry winced; he'd almost forgotten about the Cloud of Unseeing.)

As her fingers traced the well-known contours of his jaw and mask, the doubt disappeared from her expression, and the other two elements in it grew yet stronger. "Harry, it's you!" she said, in a tone that just missed being a sob of pure happiness. "Oh, Harry, I knew you'd show him somehow. But how did you do it? And why are you so cold?"

"Long story," said Harry. "Let's just say I've been meeting with my contacts in Emerald's world, and my dad there granted me a short reprieve."

"Oh," said Ginny. "Is that what I heard crackling just now?"

"Probably," said Harry. "Anyway, I only have an hour before I get sent back there permanently, so…"

But then another spasm of agony contorted Ginny's face, and suddenly what Harry had been going to say didn't seem so important to him anymore. "Ginny, what's the matter?" he said. "Did Voldemort…"

He couldn't bring himself to finish, but Ginny knew what he meant, and nodded. "Just after he killed you," she whispered, her face clear once again. "Something called Cruciatus Ultima; I think it's a sort of hybrid of Cruciatus and Avada Kedavra. He said that it would make my life ebb away by inches in bursts of… ah!"

Harry waited until the new seizure had passed, then commented, with a feeble attempt at levity, "Well, we always knew your tongue was going to get you in trouble one day."

Ginny shot a withering look at his knee. (Presumably, she had been aiming for his eyes, but her current blindness hindered her finesse.) "You don't suppose I'm sorry for what I said to him, do you?" she said. "I'd do it again in an instant. Besides, I'm not really in any danger."

Harry blinked. "Why not?"

Ginny paused to let another spasm of pain run through her, then explained simply, "Because you're here, Harry. He didn't count on that; he thought he'd live out the night, so he didn't mind using a drawn-out spell to kill me. But once you've defeated him, that will wipe out everything he's done to me."

There was utter, childlike faith in her voice, of a sort that Harry hadn't heard there in years. It was as though her second encounter with Lord Voldemort had wiped away all the worldly sophistication she had acquired over her school years, and had restored to her the gentle meekness of the girl that Harry had rescued from the Chamber of Secrets. Her life was in his hands once again, and she placed it there willingly, certain that there could be no better place for it to be.

But even as Harry felt a surge of irrational delight at this last thought, a more practical side of his brain was reminding him that he might find it difficult to earn such trust. _Once you've defeated him_: that was all very well to say, but how was he supposed to defeat Voldemort in the hour that was left to him? As Emerald had pointed out, there was still one Horcrux left, and no way readily available to destroy it, even if he had known what or where it was…

But even as he thought this, a sudden cry of anguish reverberated through the school. "NOOOOOOO!" it cried, in a high tenor voice that Harry knew all too well.

Harry jumped. "What was that?"

"Your cue, I think," said Ginny, her voice shaky from the latest burst of pain, but filled with satisfaction nonetheless. "It sounded like it came from the fifth floor; you'd better get down there."

The fifth floor… Suddenly, James's recent words, only half-heard at the time, came blazing into Harry's mind with full force. _I'll say this for your world's Riddle: he seems to have a healthy interest in the secrets of Hogwarts. _And where in Hogwarts was there a secret that could help you if you needed something permanently hidden?

"The fifth floor," he murmured. "Of course…"

Ginny smiled. "Go get him, Harry," she whispered.

Harry looked down at her, and felt as though he was seeing her for the first time. An impulse entered his head; he tried to shove it away, but his mind kept pressing it forward again. _You only have an hour left,_ it pointed out. _How are you going to feel if you leave this universe behind forever, and never had the nerve to do it?_

_But she's __Ron's sister__,_ he thought. _If he comes by and sees me doing it…_

_Spell of disinterest, _his mind reminded him. _He won't notice a thing._

_But… but…_

_Oh, stop scrupulising and just do it,_ his mind snapped.

So, with a haste born of diffidence and super-speed, he bent down and placed a tiny kiss on Ginny's cheek. (He was grateful that his blood was no longer circulating; otherwise, his face would have been as red as his costume).

Having thus satisfied his internal Pandarus, he leaped to his feet (with newfound vigour, it may be added) and ran with all his might for the Room of Requirement – little dreaming that what he found there would prove his mother right about last glimpses of home.


	28. Preparations for a Journey

Luna dropped the last item into her sky-blue satchel, and glanced down at the tattered parchment on the dais next to her. Almost time: half a minute more, at most.

Half a minute… She closed her eyes and swallowed painfully, as the enormity of the thing broke upon her afresh. Only that morning – indeed, only an hour before – the future had been a realm of limitless promise, something to be filled with adventures and discoveries and the savouring of precious friendships, and now… half a minute.

She felt her ring tremble against her glove, and a soft smile broke through the anguish of her face. It was sweet of it to want to help – but even the most powerful weapon in the universe couldn't solve every problem. It had chosen her in the first place because of her willingness to forget her own safety when her friends were threatened; if she used it now for any purpose other than the one she had resolved upon, she couldn't call herself worthy of it any longer.

With a deep breath, she opened her eyes, snapped the satchel shut, and slung it over her shoulder. Then she took one last gaze around the room – and, as she did so, she caught sight of a small, gilded figurine of the Virgin Mary, standing on a dusty pedestal amid a miscellaneous assortment of antique chessmen.

It wasn't a miraculous apparition, of course. The figurine had been standing there for over three hundred years, since a Jacobite second year had hidden it there to keep it out of the sight of the then-Headmaster (these being the notorious Younghusband years at Hogwarts, when the faintest whiff of "popery" could earn a student a week's detention). Nor did Luna know much about what the image signified – but she had managed to gather, during her travels with her father about the world, that it had something to do with a Mother in Heaven watching over her children on Earth.

And that, at that moment, was the reminder she needed. It wiped away the fear that had briefly conturbed her; strength flowed back into her arms and legs, and it was with the smiling briskness proper to an Emerald Gladiatrix that she strode back through the narrow alleyways to the corridor outside.

* * *

She had only gone a few steps from the door when a cold voice behind her said, "Ah, Miss Lovegood. Going somewhere, are we?"

She turned, and saw Voldemort standing behind her, with his arms folded across his chest and a black mamba coiled around his elbow. (The mamba surprised her; it suggested a sense of villainous style that she hadn't hitherto associated with this particular Dark Lord. In fact, it hadn't been intended as an æsthetic touch at all; Voldemort had simply thought that the snake he had conjured up to menace Ginny might come in handy later, and so he had brought it with him. But Luna did not know this.)

Mild blue eyes lifted to meet blazing red ones, and Luna was pleased to note that, beneath the icy hatred in Voldemort's gaze, there was just the faintest trace of mortal fear. She and the others had been doing their work well, it seemed.

"Yes, actually," she said. "To Albania."

Voldemort cocked his head. "Albania?" he repeated. "Now, why Albania?"

"Professor Dumbledore says that's where your last Horcrux is," said Luna simply. "So I'm going to find it and destroy it. I would have already left, but I wanted to get a few things first."

She gestured to the door of the room she had just left. "I've been keeping my mad money here ever since we found out about it last year," she said. "It's been very useful; before, people were always snitching it from me. So I fetched that; then I started thinking of other things I'd need, and they appeared one by one as soon as I thought of them." She raised the satchel in an indicative fashion.

"Ah," said Voldemort. His tone was equivocal; Luna could tell he wasn't used to people being so direct with him. "So you have everything you need in there, then?"

"Everything except food," said Luna. "The room wouldn't make any of that – I suppose because it's one of the Five Exceptions. So I was going to drop by the kitchens before I left."

"Yes," murmured Voldemort. "Yes, of course…"

Then, abruptly, he seemed to pull himself together. "But you realise, Miss Lovegood, that I can't let you just fly off and destroy my Horcrux. If that's really what you're planning…"

"It is," Luna assured him.

"…then I shall have to destroy you," said Voldemort. "A pity, really. There are so many delightful uses to which someone like you could be put. But if you're foolish enough to try and threaten me, then your death is the only possible result."

Luna nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, I expect it is, in your mind," she said. "But you may find that difficult, you know."

"Because of your ring?" Voldemort sneered. "My dear girl, Professor Snape has told me all about your ring. I know its origin, I know its powers – and, most unfortunately for you, I also know its weaknesses." He lowered a finger. "_Thanatydros!_"

A jet of yellow light shot from the metal fingertip, and hurtled towards Luna at magic's usual dizzying speed. Luna, however, had expected as much, and, the instant she saw Voldemort's lips move, she sent a command to her ring; the next moment, she was sheathed in green light and lifted into the air, and the spell passed harmlessly beneath her to strike a nearby suit of armour, turning it instantly into solid gold.

From the ground below, she heard Voldemort laugh. "Very good, Miss Lovegood," he said. "First round to you. But there are more ways than one to skin a Shrivelfig. _Avis! Oppugno!_"

There was a rustle of wings, and a flock of plump yellow birds flew up out of nowhere. They converged on Luna, unaffected by her luminous shield, and began savagely assailing her with their beaks; most of their efforts were in vain, since her uniform and mask were too tough for them to penetrate, but enough of her face and neck was exposed to put her in significant danger if their attacks got too precise.

But Luna was equal to the emergency once again. Clutching the satchel to her chest, she shook her head vigorously, sending her hair down in a long cascade to cover her jugular vein; thus temporarily protected from the worst danger, she raised her ring and sent another command. Two tiny filaments, barely distinguishable from the surrounding green, emerged from the bezel, and struck the nearest bird in its one non-yellow spot: its tiny, jet-black eyes.

As the blinded bird squawked and writhed, Luna commanded the filaments to sear through the rest of its body; emerging from somewhere behind its legs, they sought out another bird and gave it the same treatment. And so it went, until all the birds were squirming grotesquely on the makeshift spit; then Luna made the filaments expand, and her attackers simply exploded with a single soft "pop". They had been alive for less than six seconds.

As blood, feathers, and tiny internal organs fell to the floor below, Luna turned her attention to Voldemort. She had been lucky, so far, to be attacked in ways that she could handle, but she didn't know what else he might be able to do with those gauntlets of his. He might try to conjure up a cloud of pollen, or yellow sand; her mask wouldn't be able to protect her eyes from something that small, and, thus blinded, she would be an easy target for another _Thanatydros_ spell. So it was probably time to strip him of the power to cast such spells.

No sooner had she formed the thought than an obedient beam of light shot from her ring and, splitting in two as it approached Voldemort, surrounded his arms up to the elbow. Before the startled Dark Lord could react, Luna had torn the gauntlets from his hands (in the process, just to be safe, decapitating the mamba as well); with a flick of her will, she flung them into the Room of Requirement, which had obligingly changed itself into a red-hot stone cavern with a floor of molten lava.

As the gauntlets landed with a soft plop and began to hiss away their shape, Luna shut the door of the Room and turned back to Voldemort. "I did warn you, you know," she said simply. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I really must be going."

* * *

"It wouldn't seem that I have much choice but to excuse you," said Voldemort, in a tone of bitter admiration. (He looked rather funny, Luna thought, standing there in that enormous armour with his shrivelled little hands poking out from the vambraces.) "I underestimated your ring, I see; its power really is as limitless as Snape made it out to be."

Luna wanted to tell him what the Guardians had told her: that the ring was only powerful when it was used well, and that the true power rested not with it, but with its wearer. But that, she reflected, would be more trouble than it was worth. Instead, she said only, "Well, the others will probably be along for you shortly. I hope they treat you all right while they're waiting for me; the League ought to set an example of kindness to enemies, I think." And she raised the ring once more.

But then something queer happened. Instead of surrounding the young witch with its light and carrying her away, the ring formed a luminous envelope around itself, and, as the two adversaries watched, lifted itself slowly off her finger. Rotating lazily about its centre, it drifted through the air towards Lord Voldemort; as he instinctively raised a hand to ward off whatever it might be about to do, it swerved gently upward and settled on his long, white ring finger, moulding itself to his hand as though it had always been meant to go there.

* * *

For a long moment, Voldemort just stared, speechless, as the most powerful weapon in the universe glittered on his finger. Then, abruptly, he laughed – a loud, harsh, triumphant laugh. "Well, well," he said. "This rather changes things, doesn't it?"

Luna cocked her head. "Yes, I suppose it does," she said. "I wonder why the ring did that. Perhaps… but no, that doesn't make sense."

Voldemort arched an eyebrow. "What doesn't make sense, Miss Lovegood?"

"Well, I was just thinking," said Luna, "that, since the ring responds to will power, perhaps it connected with your will when the beam came into contact with you. Then, when it felt you desiring its power, the strength of your will overcame mine and summoned it to you. It seems very odd, but I suppose it's possible."

This analysis of the thing pleased Voldemort immensely. "Yes," he said, as if to himself. "Yes, naturally it would do so… and of course you wouldn't be able to summon the power to counter it, would you? If you could, Dumbledore wouldn't have you in his army. He fears power, you know – not that he minds having it himself, but he can't abide anyone who seeks to be as powerful as he."

Luna didn't reply, but merely gazed silently up at him – and in her gaze was the thing he most detested: pity. Not hypocritical pity, which he could endure well enough, but the genuine article; he could tell, beyond question, that Luna Lovegood was truly, genuinely sorry for him for being what he had chosen to be.

Abruptly, he halted his monologue and raised the ring. "Well?" he said sharply. "Aren't you going to run?"

Luna shook her head. "No, I don't think so," she said. "If I have to be killed by you, I'd prefer to be facing you when you do it."

The sneer returned to Voldemort's face. So this was what courage amounted to in the end: you acquiesced in your own destruction, and thought yourself strong for doing so. Truly, Dumbledore had trained this girl well.

"As you wish," he said. "You join an illustrious company today, my dear. It assures you of a place in history a thousand years from now; when I write my memoirs, you shall be an entry in the appendix listing those I have killed." He laughed as a thought struck him. "Indeed, if that appendix is listed chronologically, you will come right after Harry Potter. As historical footnotes go, you could hardly do better."

Then, figuring that he had sufficiently stunned and dismayed her with that revelation, he raised the ring and told it what to do. A jet of deadly green blazed out from the bezel, and the galaxy's mightiest tool for good, obedient to Thomas M. Riddle's noxiously depraved will, surged straight for Luna Lovegood's heart.

Then, in the split second before it reached her, Luna raised her satchel and pressed it against her breast. To the untutored eye, it might have seemed a reflex action, a futile attempt to shield herself against her fate – but Voldemort, who had seen more than his share of such reflexes, knew better. He knew a premeditated act when he saw one; he knew, instinctively, that Luna had been planning to make just such a motion, in just such circumstances, ever since she had emerged from the Room of Requirement. Why, he couldn't imagine, but she had – and her plan had come to fruition; therefore, in his very moment of triumph, he had, inexplicably, lost the game.

He attempted to recall the beam, but it was too late. The verdant ray slashed through satchel and bearer alike, and, as Luna fell to the ground with a faint gasp, the mangled contents of the satchel likewise tumbled out onto the floor: twelve Sickles, a map, an Albanian-English dictionary, a bottle of Anti-Growliwog Cream, a packet of sanitary napkins, and a small…

(…no, it wasn't, it couldn't be…)

…a small, silver…

(…but it _couldn't_ be, she hadn't known… she thought it was in Albania…)

…a small, silver crown of 10th-Century manufacture, sheared neatly in two and leaking black and tar-like, that let out the faintest cry of pain as it landed with a clatter on the corridor floor.

"NOOOOOOO!" Voldemort screamed.

And, from amid the shallow breaths of the dying girl on the floor, there came a soft whisper: "Yes, I'm afraid so."


	29. How She Did It

So, when Harry sped into the corridor, ready to take on his archenemy in their second final confrontation that evening, what he saw stopped him in his tracks. The image never left him as long as he lived: Voldemort, standing in the centre of a room strewn with blood (mostly avian, but Harry didn't know that), holding the fragments of his last Horcrux aloft with a Green Lantern's beam, and glaring down with impotent, murderous hatred at the mortally wounded girl lying on the floor in front of him.

"Luna!" Harry cried involuntarily.

Voldemort whirled around, releasing the beam in his surprise and sending the diadem fragments clattering to the ground. "You!" he exclaimed. "Miserable child, don't you know how to stay dead?"

"He doesn't look very alive to me," Luna murmured. "But maybe it's the light."

Harry was in no mood to discuss the details of his temporary regalvanisation. He sped to his Leaguemate's side, and knelt beside her just as he had with Ginny – and, just as with Ginny, the first words out of his mouth were, "What happened?"

"We won, Harry," said Luna simply. "You knew we would; that's how the world works. The right always wins, if it's willing to pay the cost."

"But how?" Harry pressed. "Why? What _happened_?"

Luna paused a moment to cough (sending a few droplets of blood spattering onto Harry's costume), and then, in between breaths that were growing ragged, explained. "The last Horcrux… was Ravenclaw's diadem. I'd seen it… when I moved the Cabinet for Draco, but… I thought I must have been imagining it. But then… Professor Dumbledore said that the last Horcrux… was in Albania; I remembered… what Dad had said about Helena Ravenclaw probably… ending up in Illyria, and it all… fit together." She looked up at Voldemort. "You brought it here, didn't you? When you… came to ask for the job."

She paused, but Voldemort said nothing, so she continued. "Emerald said… that we had no weapons. But she forgot… something that Professor Snape had said. Don't you remember? That… first meeting in the Headmaster's office: I asked… whether my ring could destroy a Horcrux, and… he said that my will wasn't… destructive enough. So… if someone whose will _was_… destructive enough used it, then…" The end of her sentence was broken off by another spasm of coughing, but her meaning was clear.

"You _tricked_ me?" Voldemort demanded, incredulous. "You _lied_? No-one lies to Lord Voldemort!"

"Oh, come off it, Tom," said Harry impatiently. "She's a Green Lantern; she's had the wisest people in the galaxy teach her how to control her mind. Your Legilimency didn't have a chance, you should have known that."

Voldemort didn't seem to have any answer for that, and Luna continued. "I went to… the Headmaster's office, and… took your map, Harry; then I… came here, got everything… together, and watched for him. I… knew he'd come; that's why he… was here. When he came, I… made him want to kill me, then took… all his weapons away; then I… told the ring to go to him, and he did… the rest." She smiled. "It worked… pretty well, I think."

"I don't," said Harry firmly. "Why couldn't you just tell the Room that you needed a basilisk fang? Wouldn't it have made one for you?"

He thought he saw Luna shake her head, but it was hard to be sure; her whole body was trembling now with loss of blood, and her face was almost as pale as his own. "I tried," she breathed. "Can't make… poison… that way."

"Then why didn't you go find something?" said Harry. "You had the ring, didn't you? You could have gone to the Gold Coast and found some Ugimbi-whatever, like Emerald said."

Luna looked up at him, and, for the first time in his life, he saw shock in her eyes. "Leave… the castle?" she whispered. "You mean… let him find… the diadem missing? Do you know… how angry… he'd be? He'd kill… anyone he… happened to see." She closed her eyes, as though the pain of that idea hurt more than her wound, and shook her head – Harry was sure of it, this time. "No, it had… to be this way. I didn't want… it to be, but… there are worse ways… to die."

Harry remembered the last time he'd heard a Green Lantern voice that sentiment, and bit his lip. Yes, there were worse ways to die; compared to Abin Sur and the girl in front of him, he'd picked a pretty rotten one himself. Maybe that was why he had insisted on coming back: he hadn't wanted immortality, but he had wanted to blot out the embarrassment of having Voldemort play him for a fool.

But was that really much better, he wondered? To cheat death, to undo the past: they were equally cowards' goals, equally attempts to evade the immutable nature of things. A true hero didn't run from his failures; he faced them, confessed to them, and then went on, trusting that, if he kept himself focused on the right, even those failures would somehow become sources of strength and glory. As Luna had said, that was how the world worked.

All these thoughts passed through his mind in a fraction of a second; the next moment, he dismissed them as trivial. The bravest person he'd ever known was lying crumpled on the floor with perhaps a minute to live; this was no time to spend brooding over his own bad choices.

He reached out a hand, and stroked Luna's hair gently. (It didn't seem quite appropriate, but his experience as a comforter of dying girls was limited, and it was the only thing he could think of to do.) "It's too bad you never made it to Earth-2, Luna," he whispered. "You're just about the only thing the Society needs to make it complete."

Luna didn't seem to hear. Her head was turned toward the Room of Requirement door (which hadn't yet vanished, for some reason), and, as Harry watched, she raised her hand, fingers curled, as though to charge the ring that no longer rested on her finger.

"In brightest… day," she whispered. "In… blackest night…"

Harry didn't know whether to laugh or cry – not that he could have cried anyway, in his condition. He settled for smiling shakily and whispering back, "No evil shall escape my sight."

"Good," said Luna.

Then, with a long, rattling breath, her spirit departed, and the body that had been Luna Lovegood's sank softly to the floor.


End file.
